Photo: Ankur Gulati

Now, if you know Swedes at all, you can appreciate that nationalistic isn’t exactly the first word to come to mind when you think of them. Don’t get me wrong, Swedes are proud of being Swedes, and deep down they think they’re pretty great—but they wouldn’t ever tell you that to your face. Displays of national pride make them very uncomfortable. I remember when I applied for my residence visa at the Swedish Consulate in New York, there was a pamphlet in the waiting room that read, “Sweden is almost as wonderful as your own country.” Until only a few years ago, June 6th (National Day) wasn’t even a day off from work, and it can be pretty entertaining to watch Swedes’ tentative, awkward celebrations each year.

But this wasn’t always the case: starting at around the turn of the 20th century and peaking in the 1910s, the National Romantic style of architecture was all the rage in this city, and there are plenty of landmarks around to prove it. Just as in many countries in Europe at this time, this movement was a conscious attempt to create—and celebrate!—a uniquely Swedish aesthetic. So what did they do? By melding together brick, copper, fantasies of Viking empires, occasional asymmetry, and a phobia of natural daylighting, the solution was, well, imposing architecture.