An honest answer from the soap maker.
The short answer: Because we put more oil, more time, more rural Norwegian wages, and more actual plants into every bar than the supermarket competitor does. You’re not paying for soap. You’re paying for what soap was before the chemical industry got hold of it in the 1900s.
The longer answer is below. If you walk away from this article and decide our soap isn’t worth it, that’s fine. We’d rather you know exactly what you’re paying for than feel ambushed by the price tag.
(For our Norwegian customers: A bar costs 119 kr including VAT in our own webshop. Prices outside Norway are set by the retailers who carry our soap, and they vary. More on that further down.)
We know. A bar of Dove costs a couple of dollars. A “fancy” bar at Whole Foods might run $8. And here we are, a small workshop in Vesterålen, northern Norway, making soap in a different price class altogether.
If you’ve never thought about soap before, that price probably feels insulting.
If you’ve spent any time reading the back of a Dove bar, it probably doesn’t.
Here’s what’s actually inside both.
Pull a typical drugstore bar off the shelf and you’ll usually see some combination of these on the ingredient list:
That bar is cheap because it’s mostly water, mostly cheap fat, and mostly made by a machine that produces ten thousand bars an hour.
It’s also cheap because someone else is paying the rest of the price, in dry skin, eczema, hormone disruption, or just the never-ending cycle of needing more lotion to undo what the soap did. We’ve written more about this in What Does Commercially Produced Soap Contain? if you want the full breakdown.
Here’s the actual ingredient list of one of ours, Thor’s Battle Soap, made with juniper from the mountains around our workshop:
Olive oil, coconut oil, almond oil, shea butter, cocoa butter, decoction cooked on juniper from Vesterålen, juniper berry essential oil, rosemary essential oil, rosemary extract, color pigment.
That’s it. No mineral oil. No parabens. No SLS. No synthetic fragrance. No preservatives.
When you wash with one of our bars, you’re putting food-grade oils on your skin, the same kinds of oils people cook with. The shea and cocoa butters are the same butters you’d find in high-end chocolate. The juniper is foraged a few kilometers from where the soap is made.
We use 10% more oil than the chemistry requires to make soap. That extra oil (“superfat”) doesn’t react with the lye. It stays in the finished bar and goes onto your skin every time you lather up. That’s why our soap leaves your skin soft instead of squeaky.
It’s also one of the reasons we can’t compete on price.
Let’s open the books, at least in broad strokes. A bar of Norse Viking Soap carries costs that a mass-produced bar simply doesn’t:
We pay Norwegian wages. Norway is one of the most expensive countries in the world to manufacture anything. The cheapest bar of supermarket soap is almost always made in a country where wages are 5-15 times lower than they are here. That’s not a moral judgment, it’s just math.
Our raw materials cost many times more. Olive oil costs more than animal tallow. Shea butter costs more than palm oil. Real juniper decoction costs more than “nature identical” fragrance from a synthetics lab.
Everything is done by hand. Cutting, curing, wrapping, labeling and packing. No machine does it for us.
Almost a month and a half passes between making and selling. Soap made the traditional cold-stir way needs about 6 weeks to cure. You can’t speed this up without adding chemicals, which is exactly what industrial soap makers do. We don’t. Time, in this case, has a cost.
Our margin keeps the lights on, not much more. We don’t get rich on this. We make it because we think soap should be made this way, and because enough people agree to keep us in business.
In our own webshop in Norway, a bar costs 119 kr including 25% Norwegian VAT. Outside Norway there is no Norwegian VAT, but there are other costs instead.
A bar of soap travels a long way to reach you. Shipping single bars from Vesterålen to the United States, for example, would cost more than the soap itself. That’s why we don’t ship small orders abroad. We send larger shipments to independent retailers instead, and they sell the soap to you.
That means the price on your shelf or in your cart also includes freight and import costs, the retailer’s own costs for storage, handling and payment processing, and a margin that lets them keep stocking something small and unusual. Because of this, you will often see Norse Viking Soap priced higher abroad than in Norway. That’s not a markup trick. It’s what it costs to bring a handmade bar across an ocean.
This is the question that actually decides whether a premium soap is expensive or cheap.
A bar of Norse Viking Soap weighs at least 90 grams. In daily use as both body and hand soap, one bar typically lasts 3-4 weeks, as long as you treat it right: Keep it on an airy, dry soap dish and let it dry out between every use. A natural soap that sits in a puddle of water will turn soft and mushy and disappear much faster. A bar that gets to dry properly stays firm and lasts the full 3-4 weeks.
Here’s something most natural soap makers won’t admit: Ours actually wears down a little faster than supermarket soap. That’s a direct consequence of the 10% extra oil we leave in the bar. Mass-produced soap is harder because it has less oil (and sometimes added hardeners), so it lasts longer on the dish, but it also leaves your skin drier when you use it. We made a deliberate trade: A softer, oilier bar that disappears a bit quicker, in exchange for skin that doesn’t need lotion afterwards.
Now the honest math. A bar that lasts 3-4 weeks, compared with a bottle of body wash plus a bottle of hand soap, typically costs somewhere around 20-40 cents more per day, depending on where you buy it. That works out to a few dollars a month, roughly the price of a fancy coffee or two.
We won’t dress this up. It costs more, even when you do the daily math. The question isn’t whether our soap is cheaper than the supermarket. It isn’t. The question is whether what you get for those extra cents is worth it to you: Food-grade oils on your skin instead of petroleum byproducts, real Norwegian herbs instead of synthetic fragrance, and no hormone-disrupting preservatives going down your drain.
Some people will say yes. Some will say no. Both answers are reasonable.
In the spirit of being honest about price, we should also be honest about fit. Norse Viking Soap is not the right soap for you if:
If any of these are you, we’d genuinely rather you keep your money. There’s no point pretending every soap is right for every person.
We don’t need to tell you whether this is worth it. Here’s what customers have written on our product reviews — the good, the honest, and the one who thinks it’s a bit expensive:
“Big plus that natural ingredients are used. It also lasts a long time, so the price is completely reasonable. Looking forward to trying other varieties.” — Tommy B.
“One bar lasts me about a month with daily use, and they’re wrapped in paper instead of plastic. I’ll never use any other soap!” — June L.
“I’ve also used it as a body soap in the shower, and the big advantage is that the skin doesn’t need moisturizer afterwards.” — Kjell Otto V.
“Great soap, a bit pricey.” — Anonymous
We left the last one in on purpose. A soap page without a single price complaint reads as suspicious. We’d rather you see what a real range of customers actually think.
You pay for:
That’s the trade. A little more per day than supermarket soap. We think it’s a fair price. You get to decide whether you agree.
The honest test is on your own skin. The soap maker’s own favorites are Balder’s Blue Eyes, Tyr’s Warrior Soap and Thor’s Battle Soap, so pick one of those if you want to begin where we would.
Put it on a dry, airy soap dish, let it dry between uses, and after 3-4 weeks you’ll know. Either it didn’t move the needle for you and you’ve spent a few dollars to find that out, or it did, and you’ll probably never look at a supermarket bar the same way again.
Either way, you’ll know.
How long does one bar last?
With daily shower and hand use, most customers report about a month. Keep it on a dry, airy soap dish between uses — a bar that sits in a puddle disappears much faster.
How big is one bar?
Every bar weighs at least 90 grams and is individually stamped with an expiration date. We recommend using it within 24 months of production.
Can I buy Norse Viking Soap outside Norway?
Yes — through our US retail partner. We don’t ship to private customers outside Norway, so if you’re in the United States, buying through our retailer there is the way to get your hands on a bar. We hope to add more international retailers over time.
How much does it cost in the US?
That’s set by our retail partner, not by us. Pricing abroad reflects shipping from Vesterålen, import duties, and the retailer’s own costs — so it will be typically higher than our Norwegian webshop price. For the current US price, check with our retailer directly.
Written by the people who actually make Norse Viking Soap in Vesterålen, northern Norway. Have a question we didn’t answer? Send us a note — we read every one.
