National Romanticism

Around 1900, artists, writers and architects all over the Nordic countries are searching for a national identity. In architecture this means turning away from the borrowed international styles and looking for models closer to home: the castles of the Vasa era, the Baroque of the age of greatness, medieval churches and the timber houses of the peasantry. In Skåne and southern Sweden, inspiration also comes from Scanian and Danish castles and the Late Gothic of the Hanseatic towns.

Materials should show and be honest – handmade brick, natural stone, timber and copper. Craftsmanship is held high, and plans are happily asymmetrical. The critic August Brunius even proposes the name "National Realism".

The roots are in England. The Arts and Crafts movement, John Ruskin and William Morris preach honest craft and local materials – and Swedish architects listen. As early as 1893 Carl Westman condemns the revival architecture of the day in Dagens Nyheter as a masquerade in borrowed clothes. Thirteen years later he shows the alternative. The Swedish Society of Medicine in Stockholm, completed in 1906: handmade red brick, white-barred windows, a pale stone base and a small oriel above the entrance. No borrowed style. The wall, the door, the windows and the roof tiles carry the expression themselves.

The word National Romanticism does not exist at the time. It is coined afterwards, by Johnny Roswall, and is still debated. Was it even romantic? The movement sought beauty in material, construction and function – which is why both National Realism and Material Realism have been proposed instead.

Then comes the war. In the uneasy years of the 1910s the ideals break through on a broad front. P-O Hallman plans Lärkstaden, Eriksberg and Högalid with curving streets and small squares, modelled on medieval towns. The first SKB co-operative housing is completed in 1917 in the Motorn and Vingen blocks. Façades grow heavy and closed: dark, hard-fired brick in English cross bond, patterned brickwork, brick arches over the windows and angular bay windows. The entrance is strikingly small – but set in a heavy surround of dressed stone. Other buildings are rendered with mica mixed in, and the whole façade glitters in the sun.

The masterpiece is Stockholm City Hall, designed by Ragnar Östberg and inaugurated on Midsummer's Eve 1923, built from almost eight million bricks. Around it stand Carl Westman's Courthouse in Stockholm (1911–1915), Lars Israel Wahlman's Engelbrekt Church (consecrated 1914) and Gustaf Wickman's Kiruna Church (1909–1912). Even Gothenburg's landshövdingehus get National Romantic dress in the 1910s: dark brown façades, large multi-paned windows, oval windows and crenellations – medieval defences, now purely decorative. During the 1910s a stricter classicism takes over, and the City Hall already has one foot in it.

Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau is light, soft and international; National Romanticism is dark, heavy and wants to be Swedish. Swedish Grace. The calm, classical traits of the City Hall already point towards the 1920s.