If you’ve got that Thursday feeling and are thinking about starting the weekend a day early, we may just have the perfect excuse: The Icelandic National Beer Day. Yep, March 1st every year is Iceland’s day long homage to beer and if you’ve got an ounce of empathy for this hardy bunch, you’ll go out and celebrate it too.

It says much for a country that despite enduring some of the most difficult years in its history recently, that even its darkest hour the people are still more than happy to have a day long drinkathon, and if you take a peek at the history books you can see why. Incredibly until 1989 the sale of any alcohol over 2.25% was completely banned, however, on March 1st that year it was lifted and a National Beer Day was declared. Icelanders like to have their foot firmly on the ‘celebrator’ most weekends but today there should be pub-crawls up and down the country with the good folk of Reykjavik getting the most excited.