National Romanticism in architecture – characteristics and examples

National Romanticism is a Nordic architectural style from roughly 1900 to 1920 that sought a national language of form in the buildings of the Middle Ages and the Vasa period and in local materials. Typical features are brick and granite, heavy volumes, towers, steep roofs and craft details. Stockholm City Hall is the best-known Swedish example.

Facts

A Nordic language of form

Around 1900 a strong national awareness grew in the Nordic countries. Finland was under Russian rule, Norway became independent in 1905, and in Sweden there was interest in folk culture, local heritage and history. Architects wanted to get away from Historicism's international copies of styles and from the urban glamour of Art Nouveau.

Instead they sought models in medieval churches and castles, Vasa-period palaces and the timber houses of the peasantry. The materials were to be local and honestly treated: hand-made brick, dressed granite and wood. The same longing for one's own is seen in artists' homes, such as Carl and Karin Larsson's house Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn, and in the handicraft movement, which wanted to preserve and renew the crafts of the peasantry. Read more on the page on National Romanticism.

Stockholm City Hall

Stockholm City Hall, designed by Ragnar Östberg and built 1911–1923, is the major work of National Romanticism. It rises by the water on Kungsholmen with a tower over a hundred metres high crowned by three crowns. The façades are of dark red brick, and the building mixes features of Venetian palaces, Swedish castles and Gothic churches.

The craftsmanship is just as important. Artists and craftsmen worked on mosaics, wrought iron, sculpture and textiles, and the Golden Hall is covered in gold mosaic. The City Hall was inaugurated on Midsummer Eve 1923 and is today the venue of the Nobel banquet.

More Swedish examples

The Engelbrekt Church in Stockholm, designed by Lars Israel Wahlman and consecrated in 1914, rises on a rocky outcrop with a vast church interior and a tall tower. Carl Westman designed the Stockholm Court House with castle-like features and the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg.

Stockholm Olympic Stadium, built for the Olympic Games of 1912, has brick walls and towers like a medieval castle, and Högalid Church by Ivar Tengbom has two slender towers visible across the whole of Södermalm. Villas and schools were also built in the style, often with wooden elements and steep roofs.

Finland, Denmark and Norway

In Finland National Romanticism became part of the struggle for an identity of its own. Eliel Saarinen, together with his colleagues Gesellius and Lindgren, designed the National Museum of Finland and their shared studio home Hvitträsk. Saarinen's Helsinki Central Station, with four granite giants holding lamps, was completed in 1919. Lars Sonck built Tampere Cathedral in rough-hewn granite.

In Copenhagen Martin Nyrop built the City Hall in 1892–1905, a model for Stockholm City Hall. Grundtvig's Church by P.V. Jensen-Klint, with a façade like a giant organ of yellow brick, was built during the 1920s and 1930s. In Norway the style lived on in the so-called dragon style in wood.

How to tell National Romanticism from Art Nouveau

National Romanticism and Art Nouveau were contemporary and often merge, but the feeling is different. Art Nouveau is light, undulating and urban, with iron, glass and tiles. National Romanticism is heavy, earthy and historical, with brick, granite and wood.

After the First World War National Romanticism was quickly replaced by the lighter and more austere Nordic Classicism, which in turn gave way to Functionalism. Read more in the guides to Nordic Classicism and Functionalism.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Who designed Stockholm City Hall?