The Star Goes Up: 10 Nordic Advent Stars for the Window
First Advent falls on 29 November. Ten Nordic stars for the window, from folded paper rosettes to woven fibre and a spare metal outline.
Read More →Hung on the Branch: 10 Nordic Ornaments for the Tree
In much of the Nordic region the tree is the last thing to arrive. The lights have been in the windows since the end of November, the star went up on the first Sunday of Advent, and the tree itself often waits until the day before Christmas Eve, carried in, left to settle, then dressed in an evening. Everything else about December is slow build-up. The tree is one short, concentrated piece of work.
Which is why the ornaments matter more than the tree does. The tree is gone by mid-January; the box in the loft comes down every year for a decade or three, filling one or two pieces at a time. That is the useful way to buy them: not a set of forty matching balls, but a thing you are glad to unwrap again. The ten below are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and all of them can be compared across the shops on ScandiDeals.
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1. Iittala Christmas Baubles – Five Small Reds, Graded
Small ornaments read as fruit rather than decoration, which is the oldest look there is. These Iittala glass Christmas baubles are 40 millimetres across and come five to a box, graded from a pale blush through warm orange-red to a deep cranberry. Because they are so light, they hang on the thin outer tips of the branches where a full-sized ball would droop. Grouped along one branch the gradient is visible; scattered through the tree they simply glow.
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2. Kay Bojesen Christmas Birds – Two Birds, Turned Wood
Kay Bojesen's wooden animals have been made in Denmark for generations, and the small birds are the ones that end up in a tree. This pair of Kay Bojesen Christmas birds is turned in solid wood and lacquered, one red and one green, with a gold beak and a gold thread. They are blunt, round and entirely unbreakable, which makes them the pieces a two-year-old can be handed. Hang them where a branch is strong enough to hold the weight without dipping.
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3. Kähler Hammershøi Bauble – Painted Berries, Dated Year
An ornament that carries a year on it turns into a record of which Christmas it was. The Kähler Hammershøi Christmas bauble is white porcelain, six centimetres across, with a branch of berries painted around one side in soft blue and rust, a gold crown at the top and a green silk ribbon. It is small enough to disappear in a dense tree, so give it an outer branch at eye height where the painting can be seen.
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4. Ferm Living Leaf Ornaments – Four Silver Leaves, Flat
Not everything on a tree has to be round. The Ferm Living Leaf ornaments are slim pointed leaves in silver-finished metal, four in a pack, hung on fine pale cords. Each one is a flat blade that turns slowly in the warm air coming off the lights, going from a bright edge to almost nothing as it moves. They are the cheapest kind of movement you can put in a room, and they work as well on a bare branch in a vase.
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5. Rosendahl Karen Blixen Heart – A Gilded, Beaded Heart
The heart is the Danish Christmas shape, usually folded from glossy paper by children in the week before. This is the grown-up version: the Rosendahl Karen Blixen pearl heart is an open outline rather than a solid shape, 6.5 centimetres across, gilded and edged with small beads so the light catches it all the way round. It hangs from a red thread. Of everything here it is the piece most likely to be given rather than bought for your own tree.
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6. Marimekko Keidas Bauble – Pink Petals, Green Ribbon
Finnish print on a Christmas tree is a recent idea and a good one. The Marimekko Keidas bauble is a softly squared ceramic form, seven centimetres each way, in off-white with a large pink flower across the front and a scatter of pink and green dots around it, hung on a flat green ribbon. It does not try to match anything else on the tree, which is the point. One of these among plain glass gives the whole thing a colour to hang from.
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7. Cooee Design Paper Stars – Pleated Paper, Soft Grey
Paper is the material the Nordic tree keeps returning to, because it weighs nothing and packs flat. The Cooee Design Paper Stars are pleated fans joined into eight-pointed rosettes in a warm greige, with a thin cord loop at one point. They sit happily on the outermost tips where there is no strength at all, and they are the forgiving option in a house with a cat. Stored flat under something heavy, they come out of the box square.
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8. Broste Copenhagen Mistletoe – Brass Sprig, Ivory Berries
A sprig rather than a ball, and the one piece here that need not go on the tree at all. The Broste Copenhagen Mistletoe ornament is a cluster of brass-coloured metal leaves on fine stems, hung with small ivory berries and gathered at a cord. On a tree it fills an awkward gap where a round ornament would look wrong. Off the tree it belongs in a doorway, on a beam, or over a hallway mirror, and it can stay there into January.
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9. Design House Stockholm Elsa Beskow – Three Illustrated Winter Baubles
Elsa Beskow's drawings have been in Swedish nurseries for well over a century, and they translate to porcelain without losing their looseness. The Elsa Beskow Christmas tree ornaments come three to a box, white baubles printed with children on sledges and skis in hats and mittens, hung on natural twine. This is set number seven in a numbered series, so the collection builds a set a year. Hang the three together and the scene reads across them.
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10. Orrefors Roe Deer – Clear Crystal, Leather Strap
The one to unwrap last. The Orrefors Roe deer ornament is a small deer in clear crystal caught mid-leap, legs stretched front and back, hung from a flat leather strap rather than a thread. Clear glass does nothing in a dark corner and a great deal near a light, so give it a branch where a bulb sits just behind it and the whole animal fills with light. Put it high, out of reach of a passing sleeve.
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Final Thoughts
A tree dressed from one box of matching ornaments looks finished and says nothing. A tree built up over years is uneven, and the unevenness is the whole pleasure of it: the wooden bird from the year the children were small, the dated bauble from the first Christmas in this flat. None of that can be bought in an afternoon. It can only be started.
So start with one or two, now, while the good pieces are still in stock and a parcel has time to arrive. Hang the heavy ones near the trunk, the paper and the small glass out at the tips, and leave more space between them than feels right. Prices move between shops and between regions, so compare all ten on ScandiDeals before the box goes in the basket.
