After what felt like an unending summer, sweater weather has arrived. As we lean into the chill, it’s the perfect time to notice Pittsburgh’s surprisingly Nordic side.
From a private collection turned public at The Frick Pittsburgh to meatballs and mackerel at Fet-Fisk, steam rising from Bad Sauna, and hymns sung at Scandinavyinz, the far north is closer than it looks.
The Frick: landscapes, lore, and light
On a recent crisp morning in Point Breeze, the Frick Art Museum didn’t feel like a museum at all. Stepping into The Scandinavian Home: Landscape and Lore, you half expect to be offered coffee. There’s no Viking armor or IKEA minimalism here, but something much homier.
“Home is such a multivalent term,” Dawn Brean, chief curator and director of collections at The Frick, tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “It can be your physical residence. It can also be the land itself and the national territory. Home is also a concept — a feeling, an intangible sense of comfort and security. In that way, many Nordic citizens at this time viewed the idea of home as the communities they built through a shared commitment to social democracy. A happy home contributed to the health of the nation.”
The galleries are staged like rooms: a painted pine chair here, a handwoven tapestry there, cabinets curling with mythic vines. Snowy landscapes by Gustaf Fjaestad and Akseli Gallen-Kallela hang beside glassware and ceramics, the “fine art” never quite separated from the everyday.
The show, running through Jan. 11, 2026, is the first public look at David and Susan Werner’s private collection, with more than 100 works spanning the late 18th to mid-20th centuries. Brean and consulting scholars Patricia Berman and Michelle Facos built the exhibition around a deceptively simple idea: home.
“One exciting and rare work we will have on display is a stunning tapestry of a landscape in moonlight designed by Gustaf Fjaestad and woven in 1905,” Brean says. “The Werners’ collection also has a great focus on female artists … Emilie Mundt, Beda Stjernschantz, Hilma af Klint.”
The Frick makes the case that these works were political. In the late-19th/early-20th century, when Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland were defining themselves as modern nations, artists and craftworkers reached for the local and the folkloric to argue for authentic identity.
“Landscapes were a major category of 19th-century Nordic painting and emphasized a strong connection between the natural environment and national identity,” Brean notes. “Stunning landscapes feature the dazzling northern skies, snow-blanketed hills, and the rugged fjords, waterways, and mountains of Norden.”
Brean points to Otto Hesselbom’s “Sunset in Värmland.” Hesselbom was among a group of artists passionate about the preservation of their national heritage, and this painting epitomizes the very particular idea of Nordic light. “Sunlight behaves differently at these higher latitudes,” Brean says, “resulting in stunning sunsets and lingering twilights.”
If you want to go deeper than a single lap through the galleries, The Frick’s calendar offers plenty: tours, lectures, forest-bathing, and more. On Jan. 7, in partnership with Bloomfield’s Fet-Fisk, the museum offers a culinary talk and tasting inside the exhibition.
And if that feels a lot like fika — the Swedish ritual of slowing down over coffee and pastries — it’s by design.
It’s also the perfect launchpad for noticing something else: in a city that prides itself on immigrant histories, Pittsburgh has a Nordic pulse — small, but no less enduring.
Fet-Fisk: New-Nordic food, rooted in Pennsylvania
Fet-Fisk has become Pittsburgh’s north star for contemporary Nordic cooking: cured fish, rye, foraged greens, aquavit at the bar. The East End pop-up-turned-restaurant has drawn plenty of national press since its launch, and is still booking heavy most nights.
Chef-owner Nik Forsberg calls the food “semi-Swedish, loosely Nordic.”
“Our food is more rooted in classic European cooking with nods to Nordic flavors and themes,” he tells City Paper.
Still, he sees the restaurant in dialogue with Scandinavian traditions that emphasize local sourcing and seafood. “In our context, our locale is western Pennsylvania and our primary regional focus is the produce,” he explains. “Seafood is also highly celebrated in the Nordic countries … a goal of ours was to increase Pittsburghers’ exposure and understanding of seafood.”
That mission became clear early on with his pickled mackerel dish. A direct homage to northern Europe’s devotion to pickled fish, it quickly turned into a signature item, meant to demystify a flavor unfamiliar to many Pittsburgh diners.
Some of the most traditional Nordic recipes he’s cooked have also struck a chord. On the opening menu, Forsberg featured Jansson’s Temptation, a humble Swedish casserole of potato, caramelized onion, anchovy, cream, and breadcrumbs, usually served in winter. “It’s a dish that is truly greater than the sum of its parts,” Forsberg says, “and it was a joy to hear guests continue to crave it once we moved on to lighter fare for spring.”
By June, he gave in to another inevitability: Swedish meatballs. “The amount of times I’ve heard, ‘Swedish restaurant? Are you gonna have meatballs on the menu?’ caused me much resistance to actually serving the dish,” Forsberg admits. Yet on Sundays, Fet-Fisk now serves meatballs made from fresh ground strip loin trim, accompanied with lingonberries, pickled cucumber, and a light brown cream sauce. “Most customers’ familiarity with Swedish meatballs comes from trips to IKEA,” he says. “So serving it now is a chance to use that point of reference as a gateway to an experience that often surpasses their expectations.”
Still, Forsberg insists the point isn’t fidelity to canon but the experience at the table. “There is nothing greater or more powerful than coming together over a meal. I hope our restaurant can either re-affirm or re-awaken that feeling in our guests.”
Beyond the table, another piece of Nordic life has taken root in the city….
Bad Sauna: Heat as ritual
In Point Breeze, Bad Sauna offers the one Nordic practice everyone insists is essential: the sauna. The ritual is unmistakably Finnish. “Sauna was where women gave birth, where people healed their ailing bodies, gathered with friends and family, and where bodies were prepared for the afterlife,” founder Greg Schaffer tells CP. “It’s also where magic happens, according to the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.”
Schaffer grew up in Squirrel Hill knowing almost nothing about sauna. It wasn’t until a stint in San Francisco, at Archimedes Banya, that he fell for the ritual of hot and cold. Returning home, he realized Pittsburgh once had a schvitz culture of its own, with Russian-Jewish bathhouses in the Hill District. “It’s been fun chasing down stories from the old schvitzes and connecting with ghosts from the Hill,” he says. “I see my work as helping to revive this legacy.”
The space is rigorously Finnish, built with master designer Lassi A. Liikkanen, fitted with an IKI stove, and following the “Law of Löyly,” the principle of perfect steam. “I try to honor the Finnish reverence for the sauna,” Schaffer says.
Sessions are communal, unstructured, and accessible. Unlike spas that promise optimization, Bad Sauna insists on pure leisure. “Wellbeing is not only or always about achievement,” Schaffer says. “It’s about connecting with your body, with others around you, and feeling good.”
Bad Sauna’s space may be the closest you’ll get to Helsinki or Stockholm without a boarding pass. But the city also has a community that keeps Scandinavian traditions alive in song, food, and fellowship.
Scandinavyinz: crayfish, Lucia, and community
The Scandinavian Society of Western Pennsylvania, affectionately nicknamed Scandinavyinz, has been gathering since 1983. President Eva Robinson tells CP that the group’s calendar “runs on ritual” with celebrations “10 months out of the year.”
In October, Nordic Night brings flags circling the room and national anthems sung before a sit-down dinner of fish, potatoes, and European dishes. December features the society’s Christmas party, a members’ buffet heavy with Scandinavian favorites like herring and baked goods. February belongs to Fastelavn, the Danish children’s carnival where kids dress up and strike a barrel until candy spills out. “The first hole makes you Cat Queen, the final knock-down makes you Cat King,” Robinson explains. In May, members gather to mark Norwegian Constitution Day, and midsummer is celebrated with a picnic at Aspinwall Fireman’s Memorial Park.
Though its name highlights Scandinavia, the society welcomes everyone. Members have included Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and even Icelanders in past years, along with plenty of curious non-Nordic Pittsburghers. Membership costs $25 for individuals and $30 for families per year.
For Robinson, the heart of these gatherings is hygge, the Danish concept of comfort and coziness that has spread across Scandinavia and resonates throughout the Nordic world. “It’s cozy and comfortable, yes, but more psychological than anything … if you run into an old classmate and start talking, that is hygge,” she says. “Sitting alone while it’s snowing outside and you’re warm, that is hygge too.”
That cultural thread carries into Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning, where the Swedish and Norwegian Nationality Rooms sit among 31 classrooms designed with immigrant communities.
Pitt’s Swedish and Norwegian Nationality Rooms: classrooms from another world
Inside Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning, the Swedish and Norwegian Nationality Rooms are hidden in plain sight.
The Swedish Room, dedicated in 1938, recreates buildings still visitable in Sweden’s Skansen Museum, making it a living link to history. Its standout feature is the series of paintings by Olle Nordmark, a Swedish immigrant to the U.S. in the 1920s. Drawing on decorative motifs from historic houses at Skansen, Nordmark created allegories of Justice, Judgment, and Knowledge, alongside the Magi and St. Katrina. The result offers a colorful glimpse into 18th-century folk painting.
The Norwegian Room evokes the warmth of a cottage: a fireplace, evergreen wood paneling, and ceilings enlivened with rosemaling, the traditional floral painting on spruce planks. Norwegian folk art details include a reproduction of a 1695 wedding blanket, modeled on the original in the folk museum at Lillehammer.
They aren’t just for show. Both rooms still host classes, so students take notes under symbols of Nordic heritage. When not in use, the public can book tours to step inside.
From the quiet classrooms, the trail continues Downtown.
Sibelius at Heinz Hall: the Nordic sound
On Fri., Oct. 17 and Sun., Oct. 19, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra presents Sibelius’ Finlandia, a musical paean to Finnish identity, along with Sibelius’s Sixth Symphony, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto, and The Observatory by Caroline Shaw. The program is conducted by Finnish maestro Dalia Stasevska, with Leila Josefowicz as soloist.
For those two nights, the air in Heinz Hall will tilt northward.
Put it all together — the art, the food, the sauna, the spirit — and the city offers a surprisingly Nordic day. Basically, fika in the Steel City.
This article appears in Oct. 15-21, 2025.
