The Nordic Windowsill: 10 Pots for Plants Coming Indoors
In October the plants come in and the windowsill becomes the brightest place in the flat. Ten Nordic pots for the next six months.
Read More →Closed Windows: 10 Nordic Pieces for the Scent of Autumn
Some time in the past fortnight the windows stopped being opened. Not as a decision — it simply got too cold to leave one ajar while the kettle boiled, and the house closed itself for the winter. From here until March the air indoors is the air you make: wet coats drying in the hall, onions in the pan, the radiator coming on at six.
That is why scent stops being an afterthought in a Nordic home and starts behaving like furniture. A candle lit at four does some of the work a lamp does. A diffuser in a hallway works in a room nobody is standing in. Ten pieces below — candles in glass, ceramic and tin, two sets of reeds, a spray and a pyramid for incense — all in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, all comparable on price on ScandiDeals.
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1. Skandinavisk Hav Scented Candle – Navy Glass, Pale Lid
Hav is the sea, and the Copenhagen studio behind it builds each scent around a Nordic word rather than a flower. This one sits in deep navy glass under a pale wooden lid: two hundred grams of wax, enough to carry a room through a long run of dark afternoons. The lid keeps dust off the surface and caps a wick that will not quite stop smouldering, so the candle is worth leaving out between burns. The Hav candle sets the tone for the rest.
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2. Marimekko Tomina Scented Candle – Cork Lid, Painted Diamond
Marimekko puts the pattern on the vessel and lets the wax stay quiet. The cup is white ceramic crossed by a fine red grid, with a dark navy diamond laid over the front, and the cork lid sits slightly proud of the rim. Twenty-four hours is not a long burn, so this is a candle for particular evenings rather than the whole season; when the wax is gone the cup holds pencils or brushes. The Tomina candle earns its shelf twice.
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3. Kosta Boda Mind Deep Sea – Plain Jar, Long Burn
The Swedish glassworks does not dress this one up: a straight-sided jar, a brushed metal screw lid, a navy label in block capitals. Three hundred and thirty grams is a substantial candle, the sort you light at the same hour every evening and stop thinking about, and the screw lid lets it travel between a flat and a cabin. The Mind candle is the workhorse of the ten.
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4. ERNST Winter Pear Candle – Green Glass, Green Lid
Vinterpäron, winter pear, is the Swedish idea of an autumn scent: orchard fruit rather than spice, cold rather than sweet. The jar is dark green glass with a lid in the same green, nine centimetres across — wide enough that the wax pools to the edge instead of tunnelling down the middle. It looks like something from a provisions shop rather than a perfume counter. The winter pear candle suits a kitchen table better than a dressing table.
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5. Audo Copenhagen Olfacte En Passant – Smoked Glass, Small Format
Seventy-nine grams is a short candle on purpose. The Danish studio makes these in smoked grey-brown glass with a single cream label, and the format is for places where a full-size candle would be absurd: a bathroom shelf, a bedside table, a desk during the two hours of the afternoon that need help. The En Passant candle is the low-commitment way into a scent you are not sure about.
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6. Solstickan Scented Candle – Ribbed Tin, Dry Cedarwood
A black metal tin, finely ribbed down the sides, with a tight lid stamped with the Solstickan medallion — the match-boy familiar from Swedish kitchen drawers, ringed by the old line about children and the elderly. Cedarwood is the scent: dry and woody, closer to a pencil case than a forest. Twenty-five hours in a container that cannot break makes it the one to pack for a cabin weekend. The Solstickan candle is the least precious piece here.
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7. Skandinavisk Stuga Reed Diffuser – Scent Without a Flame
A stuga is the small wooden cabin a Swedish family keeps for the summer, and the scent is built to suggest one. The object is a round amber bottle with a pale wooden collar and a bundle of light reeds, two hundred millilitres, working away in a room nobody is standing in. That is the case for reeds: a hallway, a landing, a bedroom you leave at seven and come back to at six. Turn them over when it fades. The Stuga diffuser handles the rooms you only pass through.
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8. Tell Me More Voyager Fragrance Sticks – Black Bottle, Black Reeds
The Swedish brand's version is a short black cylinder with black reeds standing up out of it, which is a different proposition from amber glass and natural wood. It reads as a graphic object, a dark mark on a shelf of pale things. A hundred millilitres is a small bottle, so put it where the room is small. The Voyager sticks are for people who want the scent without the cottage.
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9. Meraki White Tea Room Spray – Two Pumps, Then Gone
Some scent is not meant to last. A spray is for the ten minutes before someone arrives, or the kitchen after frying fish, and then it should get out of the way. The Danish brand's bottle is brown glass with a black atomiser, a hundred millilitres, and white tea is about as unobtrusive as a scent gets: clean, faintly green, no vanilla. Two pumps towards the ceiling rather than at the sofa. The white tea room spray is the quickest tool in the box.
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10. Ferm Living Pyra Incense Burner – Flat Aluminium, One Stick
Incense spent a long time out of fashion in Nordic homes and is quietly back, helped by objects like this one. It is a small wedge of brushed aluminium, a flattened pyramid, drilled once so a single stick stands straight up out of it. Set it on a saucer or a stone tile to catch the ash; the aluminium wipes clean and goes back on the shelf looking like a paperweight. The Pyra burner is the quietest object here until it is lit.
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Final Thoughts
Scent is the one part of a room that cannot be bought once and forgotten. It runs out, which is either its weakness or the whole point: a candle is used up over a season and marks it, a bottle of reeds empties by March. What stays is the vessel, which is why the ones worth buying are the ones you would keep empty — navy glass, a patterned cup, a ribbed tin, a wedge of aluminium.
Two practical notes to finish. Keep one scent to a room and let the hallway be the loud one; two strong scents in an open-plan flat cancel each other into something neither of them was. And trim the wick back to the width of a fingernail before every burn, which is most of the difference between a candle that lasts the season and one that blackens its own glass by November. Every piece above is in stock in all four countries, and you can compare what the shops are charging on ScandiDeals before you decide.
