When I was a bartender way back in Pittsburgh, I distinctly (i.e. very vaguely) recall a hockey playoff series between Pittsburgh and a Canadian team. A group of Canadian guys were in the bar cheering on their team. And a bunch of regulars at the bar were vocal supportive of their Penguins. The game was tight. Fists were being thrown on the ice. People were drinking, people were getting louder. Tensions rose.
Now, we all know what can happen in this situation. The wrong people, the wrong turn of events, the wrong comment, the wrong look, and suddenly you have a variety of otherwise reasonable men throwing haymakers in hockey jerseys their mothers got them for Christmas. Holly jolly mayhem.
The Canadian team scored next and the guys in Pittsburgh jerseys moaned. And then instead of anything negative, they ordered a round of Jack Daniels for the Canadians, delivered them personally, and shared a shot with them. Everyone had a big laugh about it. When Pittsburgh scored a few minutes later, the Canadians bought a round of CC (Canadian Club) for the Penguins guys. They too were delivered personally and with good sportsmanship and better humor they all drank shots. The next night brought the same scenario. Everyone in the bar got a kick out of watching them go back and forth, until of course none of them could stand. It was a high-scoring game. I called many cabs.
This is a perfect example of drinkplomacy – at least in some form. For thousands of years, tribes, groups, governments, and people have been sussing out, discussing, and resolving issues with a few snoots. It makes total sense, you warm up, loosen up, and relax. What better version of you can there be to represent your people’s needs and/or wants.
This goes back to the ancients. In Ancient Greece, spondai were formal truces or treaties, but it also literally meant libations – alcohol used to seal formal pacts. Similarly, symposia were political or alliance discussions and a staple feature of that was shared wine. If only Karaoke had been part of it, wars would have long ago become a thing of the past. Once you sing Piano Man with another person, you can’t fight them, let alone hit them in the face with a spear. In the Bronze Age, Near East civilizations had wine rituals – libations, pouring out wine to formally seal treaties. It’s sort of like pouring one out for your homies, if your homies were the Hittites and the Akkadians and they invented writing.
In the 1984, however, drinkplomacy was brought to another context when Canadian soldiers placed a bottle of Canadian whisky and their flag on a small uninhabited island in the Nares Straight called Hans Island. Tom Høyem, Danish Minister for Greenland, subsequently chartered a helicopter to the island, and too placed a flag and a bottle of Schnapps there. Thus began the Whisky War.
Hans Island is a kidney-shaped island (its name in Greenlandic is Tartupaluk – i.e. kidney) that exists in the freezing waters of the Nares Strait between Canada and Greenland (Denmark, for those having sudden urges of manifest destiny’s child). It became disputed after a 1973 maritime boundary treaty left its sovereignty unresolved. Both Canada and Denmark claimed it. Yet instead of nasty words or, I don’t know, the embarrassing and garbled rhetoric of a six-year-old with tiny hands and a red tie, the two countries began a light-hearted conflict which manifested in claiming the island with flags and booze.
For nearly four decades, the two sides exchanged flags and alcohol without military tension, without hateful rhetoric. The dispute formally ended in June 2022, when Canada and Denmark agreed to split the island in half, creating the world’s shortest international land border and bringing one of history’s most amicable territorial disputes to a close. And giving the globe a real-life example of exactly how we always knew a war between Denmark and Canada would play out.
So, the next time you’re arguing with a neighbor over whose property the fence is on or you’re getting heated about your team losing in a fucking game, instead of getting mad – send that person a drink. They’ll probably send you one back. And the world will be a better, and drunker, place.
