The dragon style in Norwegian decoration

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1997 by Widar Halen

Munthe successfully managed to unite domestic wooden architecture with the grandeur of the towers, porticoes, and dragon gables of the stave churches. The reception rooms and banqueting halls of these establishments soared to the roof beams, which, with the supporting columns, were carved or painted with dragons' coils and Romanesque ornament. The furniture was equally traditional - long wooden tables, benches, and chairs flanking huge fireplaces. The grand impression of a medieval hall was tempered by the presence of traditional weavings and wood carvings.

Munthe's buildings became tremendously popular and set the pattern for a number of hotels, restaurants, and houses by the Norwegian fjords, where they continue to enchant visitors with their grand facades and dragon gables. Among. them are the Hotel Dalen in Telemark (see Pl. I) and the impressive Kvikne Hotel in Balestrand (see Pl. VIII).

In 1896 the Holmenkollen Tourist Hotel burned down and Munthe had his pupil Ole Sverre (1865-1952) rebuild it. Sverre modified the original dragon gables, but the tower and the wooden-beam interiors are the same. Sverre had the painter and designer Gerhard Peter Frantz Wilhelm Munthe design the decoration of the banqueting hall, the so-called fairy tale room, where the paneling is richly carved with stylized motifs from ancient sagas as well as huge troll masks on the columns. Munthe used the same motifs in designing the tapestries, which revolutionized Norwegian textile art. Since Gerhard Munthe belonged to the new generation of artists who took their ideas from the aesthetic movement and the vogue for Japanese design, he used Norwegian motifs in a stylized way. On the chairs in the fairy tale room, for example, the dragon has been combined with the Japanese peacock (see Pl. VI).

Gerhard Munthe's own house, Leveld in Lysaker, near Oslo, built in the late 1890s, was a traditional Norwegian wooden house but with the interiors painted in light reds, blues, greens, and yellows - a scheme almost simultaneously being promoted by proponents of the aesthetic movement such as William Morris (1834-1896) in England and Carl Larsson (1853-1919) in Sweden. Furniture that Gerhard Munthe designed in 1912 for a Mrs. Anderson in Stockholm was carved by John Borgersen (1863-1930) and proves that the dragon motif was alive and well.

Borgersen, Lars Kinsarvik (see Pl. IX), and Magnus Dagestad (1865-1957) were among the most famous Norwegian furniture makers, supplying the shops of the Norwegian Handicrafts Society (founded in 1892), which furnished many houses in Norway Kinsarvik decorated the interiors of the Hotel Hardanger in Odda in 1896 and the Tronderheimen restaurant in Trondheim in 1913. Borgersen made a name for himself with furniture he exhibited at international expositions, which was acquired by leading European institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In his furniture the dragon is successfully combined with the undulating shapes of the art nouveau style. The same combination characterizes the furniture, silver, and architecture of the architect Henrik Bull. An example is a silver fruit bowl executed to his design by David Andersen of Oslo and exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 (Pls. X, XI). Examples of Bulls fusion of the dragon style and art nouveau in architecture are the Historisk Museum (built 1898-1902) and the Ministry of Finance, both in Oslo. Clearly, Bull's original dragon style can be compared to the Celtic revival in Britain.