NATO Soldiers Finished The Beer At Several Downtown Bars Last Week

NATO soldiers participating in exercises in Iceland drank so much beer in downtown Reykjavík the weekend before last that several bars simply ran out of beer, Fréttablaðið reports.

The exercises, called Trident Juncture 18, spanned all over Scandinavia, but also included Iceland. This entailed ten warships carrying 6,000 seamen, with the addition of some 400 infantry soldiers. When added to the preponderance of tourists and local revellers in downtown Reykjavík on a weekend night, the result was demand that far exceeded supply.

Nuno Alexandre Bentim Servo, one of the owners of the downtown restaurant Sæta Svínið, told reporters that he witnessed large groups of soldiers going from bar to bar. These soldiers finished off the beer supply not only at Sæta Svínið but also at Ölgerðin and American Bar.

Further, time did not seem to be a factor. Whether a weekday or weekend, or any time of day or night, there were always plenty of soldiers looking to pound beers.

As a point of consolation, there were considerably more soldiers in Norway, where Trident Juncture 18 headed off to, than in Reykjavík. Some 40,000 soldiers were expected to land in Norway, prompting Nuno to speculate that Norway may have needed to order beer from Finland to meet the demand for booze.