Swedish Painted Wall Hangings × Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

A learned 1880–1920 revival of ornament versus the peasant painters' own freehand working tradition.

From the research on Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits)

Mix them and make something Swedish Painted Wall Hangings Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics, their arrangement from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings, the finish from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits) Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

Type from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics: Hand-lettering
Blackletter
Colour from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics: Stylised figuration
Folk & sacred symbols
Composition from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings: Framed panels
Horror vacui
Surface from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings: Painterly brushwork

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

Again

UnifrakturMaguntia, standing in for The hand-lettered text of Draumkvæde (1904): a pen hand of blackletter character with long swashed ascenders and descenders, modelled on Norse saga manuscripts of the 13th and early 14th centuries, above all Codex Frisianus (c. 1300–1325), with ornamented capitals in red, some roman and some blackletter; drawn by Aug. Sørensen after Munthe's models

Text · Swedish Painted Wall Hangings

Rural Swedish wall hangings painting biblical scenes, figures in local costume, freehand in bright flat colour on cloth or paper. Two distinct schools are merged: Dalarna dalmålning, where swelling kurbits bouquets fill the gaps, and South Swedish bonad painting (Småland, Halland). Motifs came from German and French prints and figure bibles; no atlas style fits as parent. Flourishing c. 1750–1850, it survives as a revived Swedish design motif.

EB Garamond; Swedish Painted Wall Hangings used Painted hand-lettered captions and Painted hand-lettered dates

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Swedish Painted Wall Hangings, with a counter-accent from Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits) Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism)

#f1e6cc ground · 36%
#2b2118 ink · 14%
#e0a82e accent · 18%
#b3261e accent · 14%
#2f5d8a accent · 10%
#3f7a3f accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e6cc;
  --ink: #2b2118;
  --accent-1: #e0a82e;
  --accent-2: #b3261e;
  --accent-3: #2f5d8a;
  --accent-4: #3f7a3f;
  --font-display: "UnifrakturMaguntia", serif;
  --font-text: "EB Garamond", serif;
}

Use it with care

Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism): In Norway the fascist Nasjonal Samling (1933–45) took a golden sun cross on red, which it claimed as St Olav's shield, for its emblem, leaned heavily on Viking art and symbolism and built on romantic nationalism, so keep saga warriors, dragon ships and the Olav cross away from ethnic-nationalist framing. Old signs near this material, the othala rune, the sun cross (also called Odin's cross) and Odin's valknut, are used by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, though non-racist pagans also use the othala rune and the valknut: check how such a sign reads in context before borrowing it. Gallen-Kallela's 1918 insignia for the White Army's Order of the Cross of Liberty set a golden swastika into the cross: do not borrow it. Karelianism cast Karelia as a refuge of authentic Finnishness, and some of its ideas later fed the irredentist Greater Finland project, so do not present Karelian or Orthodox folk culture as merely Finland's past: Karelians are a living people with their own language and crafts. In these decades Norway's Norwegianisation policy pressed the Sámi to assimilate: do not fold Sámi duodji motifs into this Norse ornament.

The two styles

1750–present · Northern Europe Swedish Painted Wall Hangings (Dalmålning, Bonadsmålning and Kurbits) Rural Swedish wall hangings painting biblical scenes, figures in local costume, freehand in bright flat colour on cloth or paper. Two distinct schools are merged: Dalarna dalmålning, where swelling kurbits bouquets fill the gaps, and South Swedish bonad painting (Småland, Halland). Motifs came from German and French prints and figure bibles; no atlas style fits as parent. Flourishing c. 1750–1850, it survives as a revived Swedish design motif. 1880–1922 · Northern Europe Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics (Munthe & Karelianism) The flat, decorative branch of Norway's and Finland's national romanticism, which turned Viking carving, the sagas, the Kalevala and old peasant weaving into modern ornament. Gerhard Munthe set the woodcut-like pen style and blackletter type of the 1899 saga edition, had Draumkvæde (1904) hand-lettered after Norse saga manuscripts, and designed tapestries of stiff myth figures in flat folk colour; Akseli Gallen-Kallela gave the Kalevala bold outlines and flat colour in woodcuts, frescoes, ryijy rugs and book vignettes; Dragestil timber buildings carried dragon heads.

More combinations

With Swedish Painted Wall Hangings

With Norwegian and Finnish National Romantic Graphics

Every style combination