Dark by Four: 10 Nordic Lamps for the Long Evenings
The clocks went back and the afternoon disappeared with them. Ten Nordic lamps for layering light low: pendants, floor lamps, portables and one candle.
Read More →Light by the Door: 10 Nordic Lanterns for Dark Afternoons
By the middle of November the dark stops being an evening and becomes most of the day. In Oslo the light is gone before the shops shut; in London it goes at four and takes the garden with it. The first thing you lose is the outside of the house. The step, the path, the balcony rail: all of it simply absent until February unless you put something out there.
A lantern is the oldest answer to that and still the best one, a flame with a wall around it so that wind and rain become somebody else's problem. The ten below run from a 63-centimetre iron frame built for a doorstep to a ceramic pebble that costs less than a bunch of tulips. All ten are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and all are worth comparing across the shops on ScandiDeals.
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1. Broste Copenhagen Hoko – Tall Iron Frame, Ribbed Glass
Light meant for outdoors has to earn its size. The Broste Copenhagen Hoko lantern stands 63 centimetres: a square black iron frame glazed on all four sides in ribbed glass that breaks a single flame into a column of stripes. One side swings open on a hinge, so the candle can be changed without lifting the top off. Set it on the step and the house has an address again. Bring it inside in January and it holds a corner where a floor lamp would be too much.
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2. Eva Solo SunLight – No Match, No Cable
Nobody walks out into November rain twice a week to light a candle. The Eva Solo SunLight lantern removes the errand: a soft opal shade hangs inside a slim steel handle, the solar cell sits in the top, and the light comes on by itself as the afternoon goes. At 30 centimetres it carries in one hand, so it can spend the day charging on a balcony table and the evening on the hall shelf.
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3. Brafab Belfort – Built For Weather, Not Decoration
Garden lanterns usually fail at the base, where water collects. The Brafab Belfort lantern is put together like a small greenhouse instead: a powder-coated aluminium frame in a muted green, glass on four sides, a perforated tray floor so rain drains away rather than standing, and levelling feet for an uneven terrace slab. It is 28 centimetres tall and open at the top to let the heat out.
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4. House Doctor Ova – A Cage Of Thin Canes
Where the Belfort is engineering, the House Doctor Ova lantern is texture. Slim canes are bound into a tapered cage 32 centimetres tall, with a glass cylinder sitting inside it to hold the candle and keep the draught off the flame. Two iron rings at the top mean it can hang from a hook under a porch or a beam rather than stand. Lit, the canes throw a striped shadow up the wall behind, which is what makes a covered doorway feel occupied rather than merely lit.
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5. Orrefors Tou – A Chimney For One Candle
Indoors the problem reverses: one flame, no wind, and a table that needs a centre. Tou, from the Swedish glassworks Orrefors, is two pieces of clear glass — a heavy base with a metal pin for a taper candle, and a tall chimney that lifts over it, 290 millimetres in all. The glass does nothing except hold the flame and magnify it, so the candle sits in the middle of the piece as though under water. It is the one lantern here that measurably improves a dinner.
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6. KLONG Jazz – Brass Straps, Glass Cylinder
A tealight in a jam jar is still a tealight in a jam jar. The KLONG Jazz lantern in brass wraps a clear glass cylinder in polished metal: a flat brass ring on top, broad straps curving down the sides to a cup that takes the candle. The brass catches the flame on every curve and hands it back, so one tealight reads as three or four. Small enough for a bathroom shelf, formal enough for a laid table, and it will still be good in twenty years.
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7. Olsson & Jensen Nilla – Sand-Coloured Glass, Twelve Centimetres
Clear glass gives you the flame and nothing else. The Olsson & Jensen Nilla lantern is 12 centimetres of thick glass in a warm sand tone, fine bubbles caught in the walls, so the light arrives the colour of weak tea rather than white. Stand two or three in a row along a window ledge and they read as a group even unlit. Cheap enough to repeat, and better company on a grey afternoon than anything colourless.
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8. Iittala Valkea – Pressed Glass, Ultramarine Blue
Iittala's Valkea makes the opposite move: a small, heavy tealight holder 60 millimetres across, pressed in glass thick enough that the colour gathers and deepens towards the base. Unlit, the Valkea in ultramarine blue is almost navy. With a candle in it the walls turn the blue of the hour before the light goes, the one Nordic winters are full of. One on a desk is enough; four down the middle of a table is better.
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9. DBKD Bunch Mini – Smoked Glass, Deliberately Lopsided
The DBKD Bunch mini lantern looks found rather than made: a rounded, slightly lopsided body of smoked brown glass, 12 centimetres across, with a small opening in the top for a tealight. The brown holds the light back to an ember instead of letting it out, so it sits low among brighter pieces.
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10. Scandi Living Stone – A Pale Pebble, Barely There
The last one costs less than a coffee and does not try. The Scandi Living Stone lantern is a flattened white ceramic dome, 13 centimetres across, with a well cut into the top for a tealight: a pebble with a flame in it. On a windowsill the low profile is the point: nothing blocks the view and the light sits where the glass reflects it. Keep a pair by the bath and another two on the hall shelf and the dark end of the house stops feeling like the back of a cupboard.
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Final Thoughts
None of this is decoration in the seasonal sense. A lantern answers a specific problem — four months in which the useful hours end before dinner — and the ones worth owning are built like tools: glass that comes apart to be washed, metal that can get wet, a candle well wide enough to lift a spent tealight out of without a knife. Three good ones in the right places beat a dozen scattered about.
So buy the outdoor piece once and properly, then let the small glass ones multiply over the years as they get broken and replaced. That is roughly how a Nordic house ends up lit: a few considered objects, a drawer of tealights, and the habit of lighting them at four o'clock whether or not anyone is coming. All ten are compared across the shops on ScandiDeals, in every region.
