Nordic Classicism

Nordic Classicism is a style of architecture that flourished briefly across the Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, between 1910 and 1930, known in Sweden itself as Swedish Grace. It occupied a transitional position between the earlier National Romantic and Jugendstil movements and the Functionalist and modernist architecture that followed, combining classical architectural traditions with Nordic, Italian and German vernacular influences alongside early modernist ideas, and was applied equally to prestigious public buildings and to affordable residential housing. The style's emphasis on simplification, universalism and internationalism represented a deliberate reaction against the ornate eclecticism of earlier building fashions. Regarded for much of the later twentieth century as a minor interlude between two better known architectural movements, Nordic Classicism drew renewed scholarly and public attention beginning in the 1980s, when a series of studies and exhibitions reassessed its buildings, some of which continued to be completed into the mid-1930s.