The Midnight Toast: 10 Nordic Glasses, Coolers and Carafes
From the first Advent dinner to the last chime of the year, the glass cabinet does the work. Ten Nordic pieces, in stock across all four regions.
Read More →The Table Gets Dressed: 10 Nordic Linens for Long Dinners
For most of the year the table is a surface. Post lands on it, a laptop opens on it, someone's gloves dry at one end. Then the first week of November arrives, the light goes before anyone has left work, and the same table is asked to hold a dinner that runs three hours and ends with the candles burned down.
Cloth is what makes the difference, and it is the cheapest change in the house. A washed linen tablecloth alters a room more than new chairs would, and it folds away again by Monday morning. Here are ten Nordic pieces for the stretch of dinners that starts now and does not stop until January: two cloths, three runners, two mats, two kinds of napkin and the rings that hold them. All ten are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and all worth comparing across the shops on ScandiDeals before you order.
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1. Himla Sunshine tablecloth – Linen that creases on purpose
The plain one, and the one that will still be in the drawer in ten years. Sunshine is washed linen in Fog, which reads as a warm off-white rather than grey once candles are lit. At 145 by 250 centimetres it covers a six-seater with a hand's width hanging at each side. Washed linen is bought for how it behaves, not how it photographs: it leaves the machine soft, and the creases where arms rest are the point. Shake it, lay it, leave the iron in the cupboard.
Himla Sunshine tablecloth 145x250 cm Fog (beige)
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2. Kähler Hammershøi Poppy damask tablecloth – Pattern you see sideways
Damask puts the pattern in the weave instead of on top of it, so this deep green cloth is quiet from above and busy from the side: large poppy heads and buds on curving stems, drawn in the same green as the ground, surfacing only where the light catches the threads. Kähler is better known for ceramics, and the Hammershøi line keeps the same restraint on cloth as on a jug. At 150 by 200 centimetres it suits a table laid for four to six.
Kähler Hammershøi Poppy damask tablecloth green 150x200 cm
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3. Ekelund Linneväveri Koltrast runner – Blackbirds in the rowan tree
Koltrast is Swedish for blackbird, and that is exactly what is woven here: four dark birds working their way through rowan branches loaded with red berries, leaves turning from green to ochre, a soft grey border holding it all in. Ekelund weaves its cotton on jacquard looms in Sweden, so the picture is built from threads rather than printed on and survives the washing machine unchanged. At 35 by 120 centimetres it runs down the centre of a small table.
Ekelund Linneväveri Koltrast table runner 35x120 cm
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4. Fine Little Day Skiers runner – Small skiers, pale ground
Winter without a single snowflake motif. Tiny figures on skis, in blue, ochre, green and brown, are scattered across a pale undyed cloth and point in every direction at once, so the runner reads as a crowd on a hillside rather than a pattern in rows. Fine Little Day is a Swedish studio that puts drawings on textiles and leaves the background alone. Forty-five by 150 centimetres holds the serving dishes down the middle with the plates on either side.
Fine Little Day Skiers table runner Natural, 45x150 cm
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5. Almedahls Sill table runner – Herring, in rows, again
Sill means herring, and the pattern is a shoal of blue fish stacked in two tight columns, swimming between ruled black lines like a page from a ledger. It is the correct cloth for the night the pickled herring comes out of the fridge, which in this part of the year happens more than once. The white cotton ground keeps it light under a dark winter ceiling.
Almedahls Sill Table Runner blue
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6. Rörstrand Swedish Grace placemat – The china's relief, in cloth
The Swedish Grace service has a fine ribbed relief running round the rim, and this mat borrows it: a quilted cotton rectangle in Fog, a pale warm grey, with the same repeated pattern stitched into the surface. Thirty-five by 45 centimetres takes a dinner plate, a glass and a small bowl without crowding. The padding does the useful work, taking the clatter out of cutlery and plates and keeping a hot dish off the wood.
Rörstrand Swedish Grace placemat 35x45 cm Fog
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7. LIND DNA Serene placemat – Wipes clean in seconds
For the nine dinners a week that are not occasions. Serene is a recycled leather mat with a fine even grain and gently rounded corners, here in a cream that sits somewhere between bone and sand. It needs a damp cloth and nothing else: no washing, no drying rack, no ironing, which is the whole argument for it on a Tuesday. Thirty-five by 45 centimetres, and it lies flat from the first day rather than curling at the corners.
LIND DNA Serene placemat square L 35x45 cm Cream
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8. Ferm Living linen napkins – Washed linen, raw edges
Two napkins in natural linen, washed until they fall rather than stand, with the edges left soft and slightly frayed instead of hemmed into a hard line. They are generous enough to cover a lap properly, which paper never manages, and they improve with every wash. Buy two packs and they become the everyday napkins; buy one and they come out when people come round. Ferm Living works out of Copenhagen and leaves its textiles undyed more often than not.
Ferm Living Ferm Living linnen napkins 2-pack Natural
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9. Marimekko Unikko napkins – Twenty poppies, no washing
Maija Isola drew Unikko in 1964 and it has been in production ever since, which is some kind of record for a flower. This colourway is the gentle one: pale grey poppies with ochre stems on white, large enough that each 33 centimetre napkin shows one whole bloom and part of the next. Twenty to a pack, paper, for the dinners where twelve people arrive and nobody wants to be at the sink at midnight. Keep a pack in the drawer from now until Lucia.
Marimekko Unikko napkins 33x33 cm 20-pack Gray
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10. Tell Me More Nori napkin rings – Seagrass, twisted and bound
The last two centimetres of a laid table. Four rings, each one wound from twisted seagrass in its natural dry straw colour, with the texture of rope and a weight that holds a thick linen napkin without squeezing it. They give a folded napkin a reason to stand up at each place, and they take a sprig of spruce or a name card pushed under the cord.
Tell Me More Nori napkin ring 4-pack Natural
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Final Thoughts
Table linen is the one part of a dining room that changes in a minute and stores in a drawer, which is why it is worth buying properly and buying little. One good cloth, one runner you like looking at, a set of linen napkins and a stack of paper ones for the crowded nights will carry a table through midwinter and out the other side. Everything beyond that is storage.
Buy in that order if you are starting from nothing, and wash the linen before the first dinner so it has already softened. Then check all four regions before you order: the same Swedish runner can sit at noticeably different prices in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark in the same week, and the gap is often wider than the delivery charge. Compare them on ScandiDeals, then lay the table early and light the candles before anyone arrives.
