ALESUND, Norway—From tragic circumstances, a confluence of lucky events led to the creation of one of Norway’s landmark art cities.
At the turn of the 20th century, Alesund was prosperous and growing. Strategically located on seven islands along the southwest Norwegian coast, Alesund was a town of wooden buildings whose merchants had grown rich in the fishing trade.
On a winter’s night in late January 1904, a gale-force storm struck the area. One of Alesund’s wooden houses caught fire, and by morning the town was a smoking ruin, its 11,000 citizens left homeless.
In 1904, the country was suffering from heavy unemployment so an army of construction workers appeared in Alesund looking for jobs. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, infatuated with the country he had visited many times, sent several ships carrying men and materials to help rebuild the beleaguered town.
Fortunately, Alesund’s wealthy merchants could pay for the best and decided to forego cheaper, traditional, but flammable wood and rebuild their town in brick and stone.
Fifty Norwegian architects and master builders who had trained in England and Germany and who were fluent in the new architectural style of Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil, arrived to offer their services.
The Norwegian government made the resurrection of Alesund a prime goal and, within three years, from the ashes of the 1904 fire, arose a re-imagined urban landscape on the edge of sea, now called “Europe’s most complete Art Nouveau city.”
Trained mostly in the earlier German Gothic style, Alesund’s turn-of-the-century architects abandoned the emphasis on German themes, simplified the fussy structural rhetoric of a mythologized Middle Ages, and adopted instead a syncretic “Norse” style.
Predicated on functional engineering, pared-down but playful lines, and an abundance of natural light, Alesund’s builders used models chosen from the increasingly fashionable architectural vocabulary of Art Nouveau.
Incorporating motifs taken from Norse mythology and Viking history, the buildings drew their inspiration from an attention to natural forms, interpreted through idiosyncratic, handcrafted architectural statements. All rooted in Art Nouveau, the buildings appear to have grown organically. No building in Alesund looks like any other.
Everywhere you look, structure and details strike the eye. Brilliant stylized plaster flowers bloom from arches above balconies defined by decorative wrought iron. Window embrasures are outlined in contrasting shapes, and festoons of intricate colored ornamentation run across the facades of houses that, like the proverbial phoenix, rose from the ashes of the old to become a celebration of the new.
Set against a stunning Norwegian backdrop of snow-capped mountains and narrow fjords, today’s Alesund is an architectural gem whose citizens are zealously maintaining its structural integrity.
It is a member of the Réseau Art Nouveau Network, a 21-city organization dedicated to the conservation of Europe’s signature Art Nouveau towns. Of the 600 structures built in Alesund between 1904–1907, 400 still stand, the largest concentration of such buildings in the world.
For an overview of the town, Alesund’s Art Nouveau Center, or Jugendstilsenteret, is a museum incorporating interactive multimedia exhibits. Located in the former Swan Pharmacy, built between 1905–1907, the pharmacy has been returned to its pristine 1907 state, complete with embossed, William Morris-style chrysanthemum wall paper from Japan, purpose-built furniture, and a collection of leaded glass windows and art glass on display on several floors.
Slide shows illustrate Alesund before, during, and after the 1904 fire, and the museum invites you to walk through the living and working spaces of the family that created the building. The museum also houses a café and gift shop, and walking tours of the town are offered during the summer.
