Northern Silence, Storm and Light: Nordic Painters at the National Gallery (London)

An ATN guide to the Nordic masters in London’s greatest museum

At The National Gallery in London, the Nordic world reveals itself in five extraordinary moods. There is the violence of the Norwegian sea, the meditative vastness of a Finnish lake, the profound stillness of a Copenhagen interior, the Romantic force of a waterfall, and the quiet geometry of a Danish winter road. Only three of these paintings are currently on display — and together they form one of the most atmospheric mini-itineraries in the museum. For All Things Nordic readers, this is more than an art-historical detour. It is a journey through the visual soul of the North.

Tempest by Peder Balke. Picture: public domain

Currently on display: Norway’s elemental sublime

Peder Balke — The Tempest (Room 39)

Few paintings in the National Gallery feel as modern — or as Nordic — as The Tempest. Painted around 1862, Peder Balke’s tiny monochrome panel distils the power of the Norwegian coast into black, silver, and white. Two fragile boats are dwarfed by an immense sea, while sky and waves dissolve into rapid brush sweeps. The work was inspired by the storms Balke experienced on the coast of northern Norway, near the North Cape. The painting is almost abstract in its economy. The brushwork feels startlingly contemporary, anticipating twentieth-century expressionism. For ATN readers, this is Norway as visual myth: sea, danger, distance, survival. It is also deeply national. In the decades after Norway’s 1814 constitution, landscape became a cultural language of identity, and Balke turned the wild North into a symbol of nationhood.

Lake Keitele by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Picture: ATN

Currently on display: Finland’s mythic calm

Akseli Gallen-Kallela — Lake Keitele (Room 44)

If Balke gives us movement, Akseli Gallen-Kallela gives us stillness. Painted in 1905, Lake Keitele is one of the most iconic Finnish landscapes outside Finland. At first glance, it appears serene: silver water, forested islands, and a pale northern sky. But the famous zigzag lines across the lake transform the scene. According to the National Gallery, they evoke the wake of Väinämöinen, the mythic hero of the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic. At the time, Finland was still under Russian rule, and the painting carried a powerful nationalist meaning. This is Finland rendered as both reality and legend. The genius of the work lies in how it fuses political symbolism with contemplative beauty.

Interior by Vilhelm Hammershøi. Picture: ATN

Currently on display: Denmark’s poetry of silence

Vilhelm Hammershøi — Interior (Room 45)

This is perhaps the most quietly Nordic painting in the building. In Interior (1899), Vilhelm Hammershøi offers something profoundly different from the monumental landscapes of Norway and Finland. A woman stands with her back turned to the viewer in a near-empty Copenhagen room. The palette is reduced to muted whites, greys, browns, and black. Light falls softly across doors, walls, and furniture, creating a silence that feels almost audible. The figure is based on Hammershøi’s wife, Ida, and the room belonged to the merchant house in Copenhagen where the couple lived. The National Gallery notes that the artist painted more than sixty variations on these interiors. For ATN, this is pure Nordic atmosphere. Where Balke and Gallen-Kallela externalise nature, Hammershøi turns inward. This is Nordic interiority: restraint, introspection, winter light, and emotional ambiguity. It feels almost cinematic — as if Bergman had painted a room.

Not currently on display: the Romantic precursor

Johan Christian Dahl — The Lower Falls of the Labrofoss

Although not currently on display, Johan Christian Dahl remains essential to the Nordic story. Dahl is one of the fathers of Norwegian landscape painting, and his dramatic waterfalls and mountain scenes helped establish the visual language later developed by Balke. His work transforms nature into grandeur and national imagination, bridging Romanticism and modern Nordic identity.

Not currently on display: Denmark in winter

Laurits Andersen Ring — Road in the Village of Baldersbrønde (Winter Day)

If Hammershøi captures indoor stillness, Laurits Andersen Ring captures outdoor quiet. A winter road, pale light, snow, and the geometry of village life: this is Denmark stripped down to atmosphere and form. It is a reminder that Nordic painting is not always about wilderness and fjords — sometimes it is about the profound beauty of the ordinary.

ATN perspective: the five Nordic moods

Together, these five works create an extraordinary northern spectrum:

• Norway (Balke): storm and the sublime

• Finland (Gallen-Kallela): myth and stillness

• Denmark (Hammershøi): silence and interior light

• Norway (Dahl): Romantic force

• Denmark (Ring): winter everydayness

For visitors in London right now, the progression from Room 39 → 44 → 45 is almost perfect. You move from storm, to lake, to room. From the outside North to the inner North. That, perhaps, is the real genius of this accidental Nordic itinerary inside the National Gallery.

ATN Travel Tip 🇬🇧❄️

Visit these three paintings in the late afternoon, then step back out into Trafalgar Square under London’s grey spring sky. Few cities outside the Nordics can suddenly feel so Nordic.

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