Dictionary
Artist Colonies in Scandinavia

The most important Scandinavian artists' colony was in Denmark, in the fishing village of Skagen to be a bit more specific, where the Skagen painters congregated in the late 19th century. Several artists' colonies, following the French trend, sprang up in the countryside of other Scandinavian countries, not only in terms of Pleinairism, but also in the face of the development of Modernism in Scandinavia.
The foremost Norwegian colony was Fleskum, where six artist friends spent the summer of 1886 on the Fleskum homestead in the idyllic nature near Kristiania, the city today known as Oslo. Members were Christian Skredsvig, Erik Werenskiold, Kitty Kielland, Harriet Backer, Gerhard Munthe and Eilif Peterssen. Their prefferred subject was the Norwegian nature in the diffuse light ambience of the mid summer nights. Influenced by symbolist tendencies, which formed in Paris at the same time, the artists of the Fleskum colony created subjective landscapes in a special lyrism.
Several important artists'colonies were founded in Sweden, for instance in Varberg and around the Racken lake. The artists in Varberg took on and continued the modernist impulses of Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin between 1893 and 1896; the Varberg colony became a pacemaker for Swedish art. The three young modernist painters Richard Bergh, Nils Kreuger and Karl Nordström were the school's most prominent representatives.
A little later, around the turn of the century, an artists' colony was established by the painter Gustaf Fjaestad and his wife, the textile artist Maja Hallén on Racken lake. The group had its focus on Japonism and Art Nouveau, integrating their ideas in paintings and artisan works. Other Racken artists were Björn Ahlgrensson, Bror Lindh and Fritz Lindström.
For Finland the artists' colony Tuusula is worthwhile mentioning, it was established some 30 km north of Helsinki on the lake of the same name in 1897. Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, Pekka Halonen and Eero Järnefelt made open snow landscapes in Tuusula, with an atmosphere that was quite different from the melancholic moods that were generally predominant in Nordic landscape painting.