About Norlicht

Norlicht is a Scottish interiors review looking at the rooms, objects, art and landscapes of Scotland through the particular lens of northern light.

The name is a compound of two words. Nor - Norse, northern. Licht - the Scots word for light. Together they name the quality that defines Scottish interior culture more than any other: the way light enters a room at this latitude, how it falls on a wall, how it changes everything it touches.

Scotland is one of the most architecturally distinctive countries in the world. Its exteriors are immediately recognisable in the tenement, the castle, the harled cottage, the Georgian terrace. Visitors come from everywhere to see them. Yet step inside, and the distinctiveness often stops at the door. Norlicht exists to address that. Not by reaching for shortbread-tin Scottishness, not by draping every surface in tartan, but by asking quietly and seriously what it actually means for a Scottish interior to know where it is.

We look at rooms in Edinburgh's Georgian streets and Highland glens. We look at the makers, weavers, potters, painters, cabinetmakers whose work carries a sense of where it was made. We look at the dealers and auction rooms where Scotland's antiques and objects change hands, and at the specific finds that earn their place in a Scottish room. We consider specific objects, specific colours, specific Scottish traditions of craft and material. And we look at Scottish painting, because no one has understood this light, this landscape, this quality of northern atmosphere, better than the painters who have spent their lives trying to put it on canvas.

Norlicht began with a simple observation: that Scotland's interiors and Scotland's architecture are too often strangers to each other. The outside is immediately, unmistakably Scottish, the inside, no matter how beautiful, a room that could be anywhere. We are here to look carefully at the rooms, objects and landscapes of Scotland, and to share what careful looking finds. Pull up a chair. The light in here is good.