There are many buildings in Värmland that are well worth a detour. In addition to the classic manor houses, both the countryside and the towns have many houses that have been created with unusual care. Here are some of them.
Ingesund, Arvika
It was almost a given that the educator Valdemar Dahlgren would hire John Åkerlund to design his folk high school for literature, nature, singing and music, drawing and crafts with links to Swedish folk architecture. Åkerlund was the architect of both local heritage preservation and folk high schools. After Dahlgren left the school in Säffle that he had created in his youth, he ended up, after a brief interlude in Agneteberg, at the old Ingesund manor house. In 1927, Åkerlund expanded it sideways to make room for classrooms and a dining hall, while new wings provided accommodation for the students. The headmaster was given his own villa and some older farm buildings were renovated, all with great sensitivity to the calm and unpretentious character of the Värmland manor house.
For the Folk Music School building, now the Academy of Music, Åkerlund had to find a new design language, and turned to the poetic realism in brick that Cyrillus Johansson had triumphed with in the Värmland Museum. This part was completed in 1933.
Stadshotellet in Kristinehamn
Built in Kristinehamn in 1879 and designed by architect Axel Kumlien, the hotel impresses not only with its size and splendour, but also with the fact that it remains so intact. With its large banquet hall, the hotel reflects the town’s history as an annual meeting place for merchants from Gothenburg, factory owners and miners from the so-called Västerlandet, i.e. Värmland and Dalsland. When the hotel was built, the significance of this gathering had waned, but the city’s strategic location remained. Like the Italian Renaissance palaces on which it is based, the exterior is relatively restrained. The glazing of the windows hints at the location of the hall, but the double-height hall also receives light from the attic windows at the top. Kristinasalen is Värmland’s most magnificent secular room. The splendour is particularly evident in the ceiling, which is effective as these are often protected from wear and tear and renovations.
The Björnen 5 neighbourhood in Karlstad
The commercial and residential building on Järnvägsgatan is unusual in Sweden. It was designed by Carl Crispin in 1910. All the elements of classical architecture are present: a rusticated ground floor, a marked portico in the middle of the building, a hint of protruding central and side sections, and so on. All of this could look similar if the building were a hundred years older. But since almost everything old is done in a new way, the architecture represents both tradition and renewal. It is precisely this idiosyncrasy that makes the building both vibrant and exciting. The protruding sections stand like three towers with arches crowned by interlacing and oak leaves. Before the attic extension, the character was even stronger, but the bold attitude is still very much present.
The small house on the corner facing the Mortgage Association building is also worth noting. It is a little cramped, but was designed as a building in its own right by Värmland Museum architect Cyrillus Johansson in 1930.
Hagfors Town Hall
With the town hall, built in 1952, Hagfors manifested its newly acquired status as a town. The architectural commission went to Harry Egler, author of the general plan. General plans, now known as overview plans, were his speciality, but he also designed a few buildings. The best of these is Hagfors Town Hall. The bright courtyard and the walkways around it invite citizens to come in. It is more than a gesture. The space is a resource in the ongoing work of building democracy. This justified the use of expensive materials and careful craftsmanship. Hagfors’ finest building shows that luxury should be a shared asset. Egler’s town hall has had a longer lifespan than his master plan, the key parts of which disappeared when the courthouse ended up in Sunne and the railway was torn up. But the town hall and the administrative buildings next to it show how ambitious architecture can give a return on invested capital beyond the depreciation period.
The courthouse in Arvika
The rough bark of the pine trees continues in the dark red brick of the building with wide grey joints. It is a wonderful interpretation of the situation. The fact that the building remains beneath the pine trees and moves with the terrain makes its relationship with nature even clearer. American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was a pioneer in this genre when Werner Gjerming created the courthouse in 1958. The result was not only his finest work, but also one of Värmland’s most nature-oriented buildings. The courtroom stands out with its tall windows facing the slope and the city. The window recesses are clad with marble slabs, which also cover the pillars of the main entrance. The elegant typography at the side entrance is attached to the building like a brooch. A residential section was also added to the building, built with the same deep relief.
Folkets hus in Karlskoga
The Culture house in Karlskoga, built in 1953, was probably designed from the inside out by architects Erik Uppling and Eric Fylking. While the exterior appears shapeless, even arbitrary when viewed from the main thoroughfare, the interior offers well-designed walkways in all directions. The marble-clad staircase leading up to the cinema auditorium is one of Sweden’s most magnificent of its generation. The building’s main feature, however, is the large hall filled with light from high glass sections. Here, too, stone plays a key role in the design. Ekeberg marble is accompanied by several other types of rock. On the floor, they are joined together in an inlay in an abstract pattern that makes the sunlight shine even more brightly. The festive architecture and art by Bror Marklund, Armand Rossander and Göran Strååt offer a Dionysian intoxication.
Hotel Alfred Nobel and Karlskoga Town Hall
The functionalists’ fervent commitment to a completely new style of architecture waned towards the end of the 1930s. It became clear that people preferred the more traditional style and that architects should seek ‘deeper soil’. This was written by one of the earlier, more orthodox functionalists, Sune Lindström, and with Karlskoga Town Hall from 1940, he showed what this would look like in brick, paving stones, wood shavings and slate from Grythyttan. The robust design, where the paving stones from the courtyard continue into the building, is a far cry from the abstract, white surfaces of early functionalism. Here, there is room for decoratively designed banisters, while the design does not compromise on functionality. In Denmark, this new, more humanistic functionalism was called ‘the functional tradition’. Karlskoga Town Hall and Hotel changed Swedish architecture, but by the time it was completed, war had already broken out and construction activity slowed down.
Värmlands Museum
Cyrillus Johansson’s museum complex from 1929 begins at the pergola and ends at the river on the other side. His idea was that climbing plants would hide the museum from view before the building and its mirror pond came into sight. The architecture drew heavily on Far Eastern influences, but its fundamental qualities are universal: a sensual interpretation of the site, well-balanced proportions and variations, logical and practical spatial relationships, and numerous opportunities for intimate relationships between people and buildings.
In 1998, the new part of the museum was inaugurated. It is difficult to build an extension to a monument without sabotaging any of its solemnity, but the new building shows how contrasts can reinforce characters. The building designed by Carl Nyrén is more than three times the size of Johansson’s, but still allows the older building to be the main feature. The buildings have subsequently been refined and supplemented over time.
Sandgrundsparken
With the transformation of the tip of Sandgrund, the reef that has grown upstream of the Värmland Museum over the past hundred years, the city took an ambitious step in 2008 that has since continued down the western river channel. Landscape architect Thorbjörn Andersson designed the headland as a wave landscape with spring onion fields and between these different valleys such as the magnolia valley, the beech forest valley and the fern valley. The shores were furnished with jetties and seating areas.
Säffle Town Hall
In 1951, Säffle became Sweden’s last town. Three years later, the town hall, designed by architect Nils Einar Eriksson, was inaugurated. The row of shops on the right, which today also houses a library, was part of Nils Einar Eriksson’s winning competition proposal, but was designed by Carl Waldenström. The narrow, yellow brickwork emphasises the building’s unique character. There is a similarity here to the architect’s many buildings in Gothenburg, a city of yellow brickwork in contrast to Säffle’s red. The council chamber on the third floor stands out with its tall windows facing Kanaltorget. The windows of the entrance façade all have Ekeberg marble surrounds. The high quality of the architecture continues inside the building, where the stairwell is adorned with an elegant staircase – staircases were Eriksson’s speciality – and lavish furnishings. The highlight is the large inlay by Rudolf Persson, which tells the story of the new town.
The von Echstedtska estate, Säffle
The von Echstedt Estate, built between 1762 and 1764, ranks among the finest Sweden has to offer. Here, order and tidiness are combined with freedom and imagination in a way rarely seen elsewhere. The result is not only beautiful but also deeply human. The architecture, from the avenues to the interior painting, stays close to human proportions, rhythm, perception and the need for both variety and change. The foundation is laid by the Carolinian principles of order and restraint. On top of this, or rather inside it, are several layers of staged expectations of what a good life can be. The building has certainly been both despised and altered many times, but it has also been restored with a sensitive hand, which is why the feeling of being in an environment that has enriched people’s lives for a long time is strong.
Architecture can be described as a representative companion. Here, the presence of humans is evident in both images and craftsmanship. The marbling perhaps tells us that the dream was a stone house, but more likely it tells us about the pleasure of embellishing life as it actually was. Manor life in Värmland was, in Geijer’s words, festive joy in homespun coats and home-knitted wool socks.
Hypoteksföreningen in Karlstad
Jonas Jonsson, the architect and builder of the Wermland Mortgage Association building from 1853, learned his trade through a series of manor house constructions in Småland together with architect Axel Nyström. The Mortgage Association building has a structure reminiscent of Brunkeberg’s Hotel in Stockholm, which the two created together. But unlike the hotel, the building in Karlstad is a neat structure with rich grotesque ornamentation on the pilasters as its main feature. This was a decoration that also adorned the Hotel Rydberg in Stockholm, built in the same year. The architectural world was small enough that everyone knew about each other’s projects.
The building survived the fire of 1865, according to tradition, by quickly bricking up the windows on the gable. This gave the building a role as a model when the city was rebuilt, and also saved all the wooden buildings to the west. Today, they provide a picture of the pre-modern city with courtyards, stables and outbuildings. The neatness of the building was more evident before 1903, when it was extended in a discreet manner towards the west.