Scandinavian Summer Style
There are, apparently, approximately 23 million or so people living in Scandinavia. I’ve been clicking through the blog My Scandinavian Retreat by Norwegian Pippi, and it now seems possible to me that every one of those 23 million has a cool, modern, isolated cabin to which they can escape in Summer in order to commune with nature in comfort and style.
I can’t show you all 23 million – but here are just a few of the light and airy “cabins” featured on My Scandinavian Retreat. These would be fantastic places to go and do some really clear thinking: clean and simple interiors, as close as they can possibly be to rocks, trees, and water:
A Swedish Houseboat
Close to nature - Swedish Houseboat
Cabin by Swedish architects Widjedal Racki Bergerhoff.
Exterior, by Swedish architects Widjedal Racki Bergerhoff.
Norwegian retreat by architect Tommie Wilhelmsen
Retreat by architect Tommie Wilhelmsen, outside Stavanger in Norway
Småland, Sweden, designed by Swedish architect Anders Landström
Cabin in Småland, Sweden by Swedish architect Anders Landström.
Tham & Videgard Hansson Arkitekter - Archipelago Home near Stockholm, Sweden
Tham & Videgard Hansson Arkitekter - Archipelago Home
I carefully picked cabins where I could show you the kitchen, as well as the relationship between the architecture and its surroundings – I hate to get too far off subject on Monday morning. But really, with natural surroundings like these, the interior hardly matters, does it? You’d want a kitchen that doesn’t distract, that just works for you as simply and efficiently as possible – job done, here, I think.
You know, if it hadn’t been for poor King Harold winning the Battle of Stamford Bridge back in 1066, (and more famously losing the Battle of Hastings only a few weeks later), Britain could have been part of the Nordic world instead of the Norman French one*. Would we all have ended up in the type of high-tax socialist paradise that allowed us all to have summer homes like these? And the time to enjoy them? Quite a thought, isn’t it?
A huge thanks to Pippi – it must have been a real labor of love putting this collection together – there are many more at My Scandinavian Retreat, just keep clicking the “Summer House” tag and you’ll see them all.
*Warning: Flagrant misuse and over-simplification of history
