National Romanticism

Around 1900 Finland and Denmark sought an architecture of their own. In Finland it became part of the national awakening under Russian rule, with granite, timber and motifs from the Kalevala.

Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen built Hvitträsk as a shared studio and home and designed the National Museum of Finland. Saarinen’s Helsinki railway station, completed in 1919, moved from National Romanticism towards a more austere form. Lars Sonck designed Tampere Cathedral in rough granite.

In Copenhagen Martin Nyrop designed the City Hall, opened in 1905, with northern Italian models and Nordic details. P.V. Jensen-Klint’s Grundtvig’s Church, built in 1921–1940, turns the stepped gable of the Danish village church into a vast façade of yellow brick.

• Hvitträsk
• Copenhagen City Hall
• Tampere Cathedral
• National Museum of Finland
• Helsinki Central Station
• Grundtvig’s Church