Berlin’s five-state Nordic embassy is the gold standard of multilateral solidarity

“This is not a door,” says Mari Hellsén, pausing dramatically as she gestures towards the entrance of Berlin’s Nordic Embassies building. “It is the way into the North.” We’re outside the Felleshus – the shared central space of an embassy complex that includes the missions of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden to the Federal Republic of Germany. The name of the building, which Hellsén has managed for the past two decades, is derived from the Norwegian and Danish words for “shared” and “house”. It is bright and airy, a touch of Nordic simplicity in the heart of the grungy German capital, and an example of the power of a well-designed, well-staffed mission.

On the wall hangs a five-handled spade inscribed with the date in 1997 when ground was broken. It is an unsubtle symbol but this was always meant to be a place of loud and proud unity rather than quiet alliance. When Germany’s capital was moved from Bonn to Berlin in 1991 after reunification, countries with diplomatic sites in the former East and West had to create unitary hubs. Closer links between the Nordic countries, first formalised in the 1962 Helsinki Treaty, intensified after the Soviet Union’s collapse. The current Danish ambassador to Germany, Thomas Østrup Møller, calls the decision to band together and create one site for all five countries’ embassies “a greenfield investment in diplomacy”.

The Felleshus is open to the public and houses a coffee shop, an auditorium and a canteen. About 90,000 visitors stop by every year, many to avail themselves of its rich cultural programme. When Monocle visits, there is an exhibition of Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson’s black-and-white images of Greenland. The canteen, which serves inexpensive German dishes, is popular with local residents, who are allowed in after 13.00 when the embassy staff have finished their typically early Nordic lunches.

The five embassies are arranged to reflect their real-life geography: Iceland’s is to the north of Denmark’s, with Norway’s slightly to the east and Sweden’s and Finland’s further east. Each building was designed by a national architect. The broad curves inside the Danish embassy are reminiscent of a ship’s hull and a Greenlandic kayak hangs from the ceiling. Iceland’s is hewn from pink-and-yellow rhyolite. Inside, undulating concrete walls evoke typical Icelandic corrugated-iron houses. The Finnish embassy, meanwhile, is clad in glass and silvery larch wood, its exterior architecture all sharp angles in sleek shades of grey. There are also, of course, two saunas.

The Norwegians have the only garden, in which the staff keep bees. On the façade of their Snøhetta-designed building is a hulking slab of granite, which rises to a height of over 14 metres and weighs 120 tonnes. (It’s the largest monolith in Berlin.) Across the courtyard, the Swedish embassy’s architectural showpiece is a breathtaking birch spiral staircase. Gert Wingårdh’s design is so beloved back home that it featured on a Swedish stamp in 2020.

Monocle visits on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Every ambassador invokes the war when asked to bring up areas of concern and collaboration. Sweden’s Veronika Wand-Danielsson describes how it has been their joint mission to show unequivocal support for Ukraine and “to make the Germans understand what Russia is all about”. She is dressed in bright yellow and blue – the colours of the Swedish flag but worn today to represent Ukraine’s. The Finnish ambassador to Germany, Kai Sauer, believes that his country’s profile – and the image of the Nordics – has evolved in the German imagination. “It used to be focused on soft power: education, gender equality, Santa Claus,” he says. “Now it’s more about security, the Russian border and conscription.” All areas that they have worked on together to influence German public opinion.

The shared embassy model is one of symbolic co-operation but also of convenience. Iceland’s ambassador Auðunn Atlason cites a recent joint conference between his peers and the Munich Security Conference’s chairman, Wolfgang Ischinger. Leaders and political figures need only have one meeting rather than five. But as well as official gatherings, the set-up allows for more informal meetings, such as conversations in the canteen. We witness this when everyone gathers for a group photo that quickly turns into a catch-up session. “You get five for one,” says Denmark’s Østrup Møller. “It’s a good value proposition.”

In Monocle’s April issue, we profile our selection of the best foreign embassies in the world — this is just one of the establishments featured. See the rest of our favourites here.