There are cemeteries that contain masterpieces of modern architecture and there are those cemeteries which are masterpieces themselves. The Woodland Cemetery in central Stockholm is one of them. Perhaps the most famous of all, a site of architecture pilgrimage since almost its very beginning for its beauty and innovation. It was designed by Erik Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, two Swedish architects known as key figures in the Nordic Classicism of the 1920s and as pioneers of local Modernism. It has been on bucket list for many years, and I finally arrived here today. It is way more magical in person, because, remember good architecture feels and affects us emotionally and spiritually when we experience it.
The Cemetery was built in 1917 and was an ongoing project until the death of Asplund in 1940. He sought to create something special that was Romantic on one hand, but modern on the other, a complex that merges landscape and architecture into one harmonic whole. Evoking an emotional response to the natural world, but with modern structures. The architects’ main inspiration was the paintings of German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich, the landscape painter whose night skies and morning mists came to represent the power of nature for contemplation and the presence of metaphysical dimension.
For its organic architecture and the spectacular merging of structures into an amazingly pastoral natural landscape, the Woodland Cemetery has been an influence on cemetery design across the globe ever since it was built. It is called Skogskyrkogarden and since 1993 has inscribed a UNESCO World Hertage for the special experience of the Nordic woodland and for the integration of architecture and landscape into a universal value. While Asplund designed all chapels and buildings, local artists, such as Sven Erixson and Carl MillesOtte Sköld contributed the decorative elements, and thus it has become a prominent example of architecture, art, and cultural landscape being formed into a cemetery. And, yes, Swedish movie start Greta Garbo is burried here too.
