Nordic Art and Architecture

I

Introduction

Nordic Art and Architecture, the painting, sculpture, architecture, and associated arts of a group of five northern European countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The term “Scandinavian” is sometimes loosely applied to these countries, although it is more usually restricted to three of them: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

The Nordic countries do not form a homogeneous group, but they have strong cultural links with each other, reflecting the fact that their histories have been complexly interwoven. There has been a good deal of conflict and war between the countries, and at various times one or more of them have been subject to one of the others. Denmark, for example, was a powerful kingdom in the Middle Ages and for lengthy periods ruled Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Similarly, in later centuries, Finland was long dominated by Sweden. During the 19th century the struggle for freedom from such foreign domination tended to give art a more nationalist identity in the Nordic lands, as it did in many other European countries.

The visual arts do not have a continuously rich tradition in the Nordic countries, but there have been several notable contributions, some of them of highly distinct type or of European significance. Norway, for example, boasts a unique type of medieval wooden church and in Edvard Munch one of the towering figures of modern painting; Denmark had some rich achievements in the Neo-Classical era; and Finland and Sweden produced outstanding 20th-century architects in Alvar Aalto and Gunnar Asplund respectively. Even Iceland, a country poor in resources and remote from the major cultural centres, has been home to some interesting art, including illuminated manuscripts.

II

Medieval Period

A

Architecture

Viking art flourished in Scandinavia from about 800 to 1100, but for the purposes of this article, Nordic art begins with the Christianization of the countries concerned, as this brought them nearer to the mainstream of European art and in particular introduced a tradition of large-scale architecture. Churches not only were the most important building type, but also provided the focus for other forms of art, such as wall paintings and decorative carvings. The spread of Christianity was gradual. In Denmark, for example, it was introduced in the late 10th century and the earliest stone churches date from about a hundred years later. In all the Nordic lands it was permanently established by the end of the 11th century, and in 1103 Lund in southern Sweden became the first place among any of these countries to have an archbishop.

The cathedral at Lund, which was probably begun soon after its elevation to an archbishopric, is one of the most impressive of all Nordic Romanesque churches. It has a majestic pair of western towers and an ornate apse at the east end. Predominantly the strongest influences are from Germany, but the apse has an Italian flavour. The cathedral has rich sculptural decoration, the most remarkable elements of which are two columns in the crypt adorned with enigmatic human figures. One column has a powerful male figure known as the Giant Finn, and the other has a woman and child, taken to be his wife and their offspring. The figures are perhaps connected with a legend about a giant who helped build the great church.

Other notable Romanesque cathedrals are at Ribe and Viborg in Denmark, but the most distinctive Nordic churches of the period are small wooden buildings of a type (the stave church) found only in Norway. A stave is simply an upright length of wood (as in a barrel), and the walls of these churches are built of vertical planks, rather than the horizontal logs found in other types of vernacular timber building. However, it is the picturesque steep roofs and the elaborate carved decoration that makes these churches so memorable. The carving is typically of fanciful animal forms, such as dragon-heads, recalling the vigorous patterns of Viking decoration. More than a thousand stave churches were built, from the 12th to the 14th century, but only about 30 survive. The most famous is the church of St Andrew at Borgund, dating from the 12th century.

Norway—like Finland and Sweden—is a land of forests, so it has a great tradition of building (and carving) in wood, but because the material is perishable, comparatively few early wooden structures remain, as witness the low survival rate for stave churches. In addition to wood and stone, brick was often used in the Nordic lands in the Middle Ages, especially in Denmark and Finland, reflecting the influence from north Germany across the Baltic. The best examples include the church of Our Lady in Kalundborg, Denmark (c. 1200), which has five powerful towers that create a magnificent skyline, and Turku Cathedral (dating mainly from the 14th century), the only large medieval church in Finland.

Turku Cathedral is in the Gothic style, which began to replace Romanesque in the Nordic countries from about the early 13th century. Other major buildings in the style include Uppsala Cathedral in Sweden (begun c. 1270), which is strongly French in appearance, and Trondheim Cathedral in Norway. This was begun in about 1070 but not finished until about 1325, and better than any other building in the Nordic countries it illustrates the development from Romanesque to a mature Gothic style. Some of the details of the later work seem English in inspiration, reflecting the intricacy of the contemporary Decorated style.

Medieval secular buildings in the Nordic countries include numerous castles, of which one of the largest and most important was at Turku (originally begun c. 1280 and subsequently much rebuilt and expanded). However, the most impressive secular building of the time is Håkon’s Hall (completed 1261), part of the royal palace at Bergen, which at this time was the largest and most important town in Norway.

B

Sculpture

Buildings were often adorned with sculpture, externally and internally. Common types in churches included figures of the Virgin and the crucified Christ, and furnishings such as baptismal fonts were often richly ornamented. The greatest of all pieces of medieval sculpture in the Nordic countries is a stirring, highly theatrical group of St George and the Dragon (completed 1489) in Stockholm's main church, the Storkyrka. It is by the German sculptor Bernt Notke and commemorates a Swedish victory in battle against Denmark, in which St George is said to have helped the Swedes.

C

Painting

Medieval Nordic painting takes the form mainly of church murals, and there are some particularly good examples in the Uppland region of southern Sweden. Some of these are by named artists, such as those signed by Johannes Rosenrod in Tensta Church (1437) and those by Albert the Painter (Albertus Pictor) in Harkeberga Church (c. 1485). Both of these artists were perhaps of German origin; Rosenrod is very obscure, but Albert is documented as a prosperous citizen in Stockholm and numerous works by him are known.

There are impressive church murals also in Denmark, Finland, and Norway (and Norway also produced some good altar frontals), but among the Nordic countries only Iceland made even a modest contribution to manuscript illumination. Between about 1200 and 1400 numerous illustrated books were produced there, some of them for export. The best collection is in the Árni Magnusson Institute in Reykjavík.

After this tradition of manuscript illumination died out, Iceland entered on a long period of artistic stagnation, lasting into the 19th century. At the end of the Middle Ages, Norway too was in artistic decline, following the devastating effects of the Black Death, which struck in about 1350 (perhaps half the population died), and the country did not fully recover until the 17th century. Finland, meanwhile, was sparsely populated and economically poor, so for a lengthy period Denmark and Sweden were the only Nordic countries where art flourished to any notable degree.

III

1500-1700