The world’s most valuable bottle of aquavit

Tucked away in storage in Australia is a bottle of Linie Aquavit that I’m hoping will fund my retirement.

It’s a bottle of Norwegian firewater that accompanied me on my big trip around the equator and crossed latitude zero as many times as I did.

The Norwegians believe that aquavit gets better every time it crosses the equator.

The phenomenon was first discovered in 1805 when the crew of a ship that regularly scuttled between Norway and Australia found a crate of the stuff they’d forgotten about hidden in the hull. 

They cracked it open and were astounded by how good it tasted. 

A legend was born. Now every bottle of aquavit produced is sent on an around the world trip on a shipping container before it is sold.

I’m not sure exactly how many times my bottle of aquavit crossed the equator. 

I have a notebook, also in storage, where I jotted the times and dates of crossings.

And I also have photographic evidence of most of the crossings.

The main image for this post, for example, was taken at Equator station in Kenya.

But there were times – on the backs of trucks in Zaire or on river boats in Indonesia – where the bottle crossed back and forth across the equatorial line and I was blissfully aware.

And at places where the equator was clearly marked I also tended to wave the bottle back and forth over the line a number of times.

Realistically, where talking thousands of times.

So, Norwegian billionaires – what am I bid?