Some retrospective thoughts about our trip to Finland and Norway recently concluded. Much is made of Scandinavian design, spare and clean. We just experienced a whole bunch of it.
In large doses the architecture is cold, cold, cold ... bleak even. Combined with gray, overcast skies and dark pine forests, brrrrrrr., grim. No warmth, no whimsy, a first cousin to Russia's Socialist Realism, without the massiveness. It makes sense, the Rus who founded Russia were eastern Vikings from Sweden.
If the region's buildings lack charm, the people are a relatively attractive lot. This observation is far from original - there are many fine-featured young ladies who are unselfconsciously decorative.
As the other DrC has written, we were unprepared for the large expanses of bare rock on the northern coast of Norway. Northern Finland is covered in boreal forest; northern Norway, not so much. The coastline shows a lot of glacier-scraped shield, bald as an egg.
