The Viking era and the early Middle Ages provided the motifs for hand-crafted articles incorporating the so-called dragon style, which the silversmith Henrik Møller from Trondheim hoped to popularize abroad through his designs. This explains his deliberate orientation to the tourist market. His customers included Wilhelm II of Germany.

Arnold Krog’s development of underglaze painting for the Copenhagen porcelain manufactory was, in technical terms, an international sensation; the new porcelain style, incorporating northern flora and fauna in true-to-nature representations, is a product of the reaffirmed self-confidence of the Scandinavians.