The Art of Scandinavia - Norway

Notes from BBC documentary 'The Art of Scandinavia - Part 1/3 Norway' by Andrew Graham-Dixon.

Denmark Sweden and Norway are connected by language, their Viking history and their landscape and weather. 

Their nature is their enemy but also the inspiration for their arts.

The Scandinavian ‘mind’ has been shaped by its nature. 

Landscape and mindset are shaped by hardness, sharpness, clarity, pride, living at the margins, loneliness and the determination to endure. 

Norway

• The most remote and sparsely populated of the three. 
• Ancient Scandinavians have a darkly apocalyptic view of the world. 
• They thought nothing would last because of the weather. 
• The viking ship is a symbol of strength and terror. 
• It has structural beauty, naked engineering and is formed to the natural curve of the waves. 
• It is designed around nature to work with the landscape functionally. 

• A small population of people leading simple lives, predominantly in farming and fishing. 
• There was no time for art. 
• Norwegians are patriotic people, but proud Norwegian art is not based on the successes of the city, their pride lies in their natural surroundings. 
• The Romantic Nationalists had pride in the uniqueness of Norway. 
• They explored to the furthest and unreachable parts of Norway to capture the landscapes and record the life and culture of Norwegians. 
• Where the mountains meet the ocean there are extreme contrasts. 
• The conventions that artists learn about landscape paintings did not apply anymore. 
• Everything was brought back to ‘ultimate simplicities’ of a black and white palette to capture the ‘elemental nature’. 
• There is a contrast also present between the bleak landscape and the existence of humans within it. 
• Their landscape is their art. 
• Permanent forms, the landscape is translated into design. White reflects the ice, glass reflects the water. 

• In order to be Scandinavian you need to exist on your own. Can you build a real society on solitude?
• To be rich and to flaunt it was frowned upon - Norway was a classless place. 
• The landscape of the city can defeat the landscape of the mind. 
• The supposed life of a Scandinavian is loneliness, misery, despair and anxiety. Why is this so different to the lifestyle we are seeing today?
• Hardship breeds a collective responsibility which probably lead to the generosity of Norway’s welfare state. 

Summary 

This documentary has been really useful to me. I have been doing a lot of research into modern day Scandinavian lifestyle but not enough into the history of it. The information here has made me start to realise why these countries are the way they are. The hardship of battling against nature has caused Norwegians to appreciate and work with the weather and landscape of their country instead of against it. Their simple lives, dismissal of class differences and their generous welfare system causes minimal conflict in their society. I feel like Norwegians have an admirable lifestyle as they appreciate and use what they have to their advantage. The commonality between citizens creates a society even if it is quite a solitary lifestyle.