The best Scandinavian art prints in our gallery: seven picks

We sell twenty prints. That's the whole gallery: five artists, three categories, nothing hiding in a stockroom. So this can't honestly be a survey of the best Scandinavian art prints anywhere, and most pages claiming to be one have simply reordered somebody else's shop.

Here's the honest version instead. These are the seven prints of ours we'd hang first, and the argument for each.

Three questions decided it. Does the print hold a wall from the other side of the room? Does it still give you something at close range, a year in? And is it doing a job none of the other nineteen do? They're in no order, and there are seven because that's where the arguments ran out.

Swallow Dive, Helene Brox

Two colours, and that's the whole trick. Swallow Dive fills the frame edge to edge with diving birds in deep cobalt on warm cream, no horizon, no resting point. All the movement is carried by shape rather than colour, which is much the harder way to do it, and it's why the print reads clearly from across a room while staying calm enough to hang above a bed. If you're buying one piece from us and you want the safest choice that doesn't feel like one, this is it. 50 x 70 cm.

Eltsjoen, Ingunn Dybendal

The opposite bet, and the reason it's here. Eltsjoen takes a Nordic lake landscape and redraws the whole thing as pattern: pink sky, dark mountain, a forest turned into folk motifs, water pooling in pale rings around a bridge. It's the most detailed piece in the gallery, worked stroke by stroke in coloured pencil, and it's the one print here that genuinely rewards the hundredth look. Which means hanging it where people sit rather than where they walk past. A reading corner, the wall beside a desk, anywhere you're close enough to keep finding things.

Birdie Blue, Renate Thor

Birdie Blue is the most classically Scandinavian thing we sell, and the only print on this list rooted in screen printing. Renate Thor works with paper stencils and bold ink, and the unpredictability of the layering is the point of her practice rather than a side effect of it. A tumbling flock of cream birds packs a petrol-blue ground edge to edge until it reads as pattern first and birds second, marigold tails flashing, tiny red eyes keeping the whole thing alive. It also earns its place for a practical reason: it comes in brown, green and pink too, in A3, A2 and A1, so it's the one print in the gallery you can buy as a set and scale to the wall you've got. There's more of her work on Renate's page.

Mean Snothing, Simen Wahlqvist

Scandinavian design gets written up as serious, which misses the dry wit running underneath it. Mean Snothing is that wit in one image: an orange man with a Newton's cradle for eyes, one ball caught mid-swing, the face beneath it entirely deadpan. Physics happening on a forehead and nobody reacting. Wahlqvist draws with as few lines as he can get away with, and reckons a drawing's finished when it makes him laugh; this one clearly did. It's square, 50 x 50 cm, and it does more for a home office than any motivational poster ever has.

Morgenstrekk, Simen Wahlqvist

Two by the same hand needs justifying, so: Morgenstrekk is the gentle end of the same joke. A figure reaching for a small sun with a charging cable wound round him, the cable trailing down to a plug at the skirting board, as though he's unplugged himself from the night and is charging off the morning instead. Ochre on warm peach, drawn with the same handful of lines. Where Mean Snothing gets a laugh out of a guest, this is a print you can wake up to, and at 50 x 70 cm it scales to a wall the square illustrations can't.

Vinkveld, Sia Siamos

Sia Siamos paints four table scenes for us, and Vinkveld is the best of them because it's the loosest. Wine evening, in Norwegian: a glass of red, green olives, dark grapes and vine tomatoes against checked tiles, the tiles dissolving into brushstrokes behind. The bottle in the foreground has its cork already adrift, which tells you where the evening's heading. The paint is thicker and moodier than in her other tables, and the print belongs on a kitchen or dining wall, near actual food and actual wine. If you'd rather have the same table earlier in the day, Morgenlevering is breakfast.

IThinkIThink, Helene Brox

The loudest print we sell, and it earns its place for one reason: it's the one people react to out loud. IThinkIThink puts a cobalt head on shocking pink and spells its confession across it in green brush strokes, I think I think too much, with red squiggles looping through the profile like thoughts that won't settle and two wide mismatched eyes finishing the job. It isn't for a room that's already busy. It is the best gift in the gallery, for the person whose mind never sits down. Possibly you.

What isn't on the list

The other thirteen aren't rejects. Several are off it for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. Trysilkaffe is pattern on pattern on pattern, and superb if that's your taste. Dragon is the most energetic thing Brox has drawn and wants a wall that can hold its nerve. Tree Top Peach is the quietest print we've got and will settle a bedroom without vanishing into it. Those are arguments about your wall rather than ours, which is the honest reason they're not here. Have a look through the three categories whole and make them yourself: abstract, botanical and illustrations.

Whichever you land on, every print is made to order, unframed or with a wood, black or white frame chosen on the product page, and delivered worldwide.

If you know what you want but not what size, our guide to print sizes works through it room by room. If you know the wall but not the piece, eight ways to dress a wall is the practical version and The Art of Choosing Art is the long one. If you know the room but nothing else, the living room and bedroom collections are curated for exactly that. And if you'd rather just look, the whole gallery sits on the Scandinavian wall art page.