The champagne flowed along with tears of joy when the winning female athletes, known collectively simply as the "handball girls" (håndballjentene), gathered for their victory party at a hotel in Budapest.
Their championship victory was the proverbial "thrilling close one," with the Norwegian handball players running neck and neck with their arch rivals from Denmark. The final score ended at 27-25, after the Danes had held the lead at 22-20 with just 11 minutes left.
The Norwegians earlier in the weekend had managed to knock out both the Hungarian team and others before that, to advance to the finals.
"We're good in handball but quite good at partying also," said team captain Gro Hammerseng, as she helped teammates tackle a double-magnum bottle of bubbly.
Each of the players will get a bonus of NOK 30,000 along with all the glory of winning back the Norwegians' honor in women's handball, which was firmly established internationally when they took gold at the summer Olympics in Seoul in 1988.
Now they're feeling golden again. Even the Danish press conceded that the Norwegians' victory was well-deserved. "Norway deservedly won European gold despite a tight final again Denmark," wrote the web site for newspaper Berlinske Tidende.
"Stupid losses of the ball at important points cost (Denmark) the European championship against Norway," wrote Ekstra Bladet.