980 Raøl

Raøl is one of the oldest surviving forms of beer in Europe.

For centuries, the urban world believed beers like this had vanished. Then, hidden in isolated farmhouses in western Norway, brewers were discovered still making raw ale much as their ancestors had generations before. Some families had preserved their own yeast cultures for hundreds of years. These yeasts, now called kveik, turned out to be genetically distinct from modern industrial brewing strains and uniquely suited to hot, rapid fermentation.

The discovery stunned the brewing world.

This was not archaeology. It was a living tradition.

Raøl is unlike any modern beer. The wort is not boiled. Juniper branches line the mash tun. Juniper-infused water replaces hops as the bittering and preservative agent. Smoke, spruce, raw grain, and the forest itself become part of the flavour. Historically, every farm brewed differently. Every valley brewed differently. There was no single recipe.

And there still isn’t.

Our 980 Raøl is not an exact recreation of a beer from a specific year. The year 980 sits roughly at the centre of the long Scandinavian brewing tradition this beer explores. It is an exploration of brewing traditions that existed across Scandinavia from the Migration Period through the Viking Age and well into the medieval world.

To understand this ale, it helps to understand the people who brewed it.

In the centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Scandinavia entered a period of hardship and transformation. Volcanic eruptions in the 530s triggered the Fimbulwinter, a volcanic winter that lasted from 535 through 538. Years of cold summers, crop failures, famine, and social collapse across northern Europe followed. Formerly thriving islands were left uninhabited. Farms and settlements across Scandinavia were abandoned. Nearly half the population may have died.

And something new emerged.

Themes of struggle, fatalism, war, and Ragnarök, a final battle that would destroy even the gods, became increasingly central to the surviving mythology. And over the following centuries, Scandinavian society reorganised itself around harder realities. Power concentrated around war leaders and sea kings. Nordic shipbuilders created remarkably fast ships, longships for war and knarrs for transport. Trade routes expanded across the rivers of Russia, the North Atlantic, and beyond. The Viking Age began.

The mead hall was the centre of Viking-age society. This hall culture, vividly described in the Epic poem Beowulf, was a sanctuary against a harsh wilderness. It's where warriors swore absolute allegiance to their lords and poets recited tales of the great feats of heroes to inspire a love of battle and honour. Young men sought admission and, perhaps, a seat on a longship. Mead flowed freely at the hall, and sometimes prestigious imported wine was reserved for the elite. But not ale. This was for everyday enjoyment and sustenance. 

In Norway, medieval law required farmers to brew ale, which was served with meals and at major feasts and seasonal gatherings. Ale was tied to hospitality, ritual, and community itself. It's what farmers and fishermen drank. Warriors would drink it, too, but at home with their families. And the ale they brewed was not like anything sold today.

Cloudy. Rustic. Fresh. Sometimes smoky. Sometimes sour. Often consumed young. A beer shaped by grain, wood smoke, local water, and generations of inherited practice.

Our version changes slightly from batch to batch as we explore the character of the old Scandinavian farmhouse ales. Some lean further into smoke and roast. Others into spruce, juniper, or grain. We treat each batch as part brewing experiment, part historical interpretation.

Because there was never one authentic Viking ale.

Only thousands of farmhouse brewers making ale from the forests, fields, and water around them.

980 Raøl is our attempt to reconnect with that world: a world of long winters, timber halls, wet earth, sea spray, and firelight. In a culture scarred by the Fimbulwinter, where survival was uncertain even for the gods, Raøl was simply a part of being alive. 

Availability: Year round

First Produced: 2020

Alc/vol. 6.5%