Nordic Noir: Deadly Design from the Peacemongering Periphery

Abstract

The countries of Scandinavia are routinely touted as peaceful, harmonious societies. Correspondingly, Scandinavian design is promoted as democratic, humane, and friendly. However, the reality is that Scandinavian history is fraught with military conflict, and that not all Scandinavian design is benign. These two less advertised trajectories in Scandinavian culture converge on the region’s military arms industry, which for more than a century dutifully has delivered deadly designs to an eager international export market. This article will ask why these arguably controversial objects seem to be able to “fly under the radar” of the official branding and public perception of Norway and Sweden as peace-nations, and explore how they vehemently challenge the canon of Scandinavian design in that they represent a type of material culture diametrically opposed to the delicate glass and elegant teak furniture normally associated with design from this region.

Keywords:

• weapons
• military
• guns
• myths
• historiography
• Norway
• Sweden
• Scandinavia
• Scandinavian design

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Linge left his position at Westermoen in 1956 and set up as a freelance designer. He continued to work for the company as a consultant until 1968, when he terminated his contract because he felt his contributions were not recognized properly. Two years later, in 1970, he even sued his former employer over royalty issues and ownership of his designs. The court found, however, that the design of a boat like Nasty was too determined by traditional forms, physical constraints, and the client’s specifications for it to be deemed a sufficiently creative work and thus worthy of protection under intellectual property rights (Oslo byrett, March 10, 1972, case No. 176/70-XII-5). Linge appealed the verdict, but the parties settled out of court.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kjetil Fallan

Kjetil Fallan is Professor of Design History in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo. He is author of Design History: Understanding Theory and Method (Berg, 2010); of numerous articles published in a range of journals, including the Journal of Design History, Design Issues, Design and Culture, Enterprise and Society, and History and Technology; and of chapters in, for example, Writing Design: Words and Objects (Berg, 2011), Assigning Cultural Value (Peter Lang, 2013), and The Making of European Consumption: Facing the American Challenge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). He is editor of Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories (Berg, 2012) and co-editor, with Grace-Lees Maffei, of Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). Fallan also serves as an editor of the Journal of Design History and is on the advisory boards of Design and Culture and AIS/Design: Storia e Ricerche.

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