Nordic ideas, precedents and designers turned up frequently in Robin Boyd’s writing. Particular figures caught his interest at different times: in the late 1950s and into the 60s  Boyd wrote often about Eero Saarinen’s work, later the complex and politically fraught Sydney Opera House project brought Denmark’s Jørn Utzon to Boyd’s attention. The general diffusion of Scandinavian design in the mid-20th century only partly accounts for Boyd’s fascination with the region - he also saw particular affinities between Australia and the Nordic countries that became touchstones in his writing. His visit in 1950 appears to have influenced his thinking on architectural regionalism, a key interest. Boyd was also fascinated by the precedent Sweden, Denmark and Finland offered for housing and urban design - Stockholm’s dense apartment-block neighbourhoods and prefabricated housing seemed relevant to Australia’s own housing challenges, as did the planned communities of Vallingby in Sweden and, later, Tapiola in Finland. Mostly by positive example, Boyd argued for the value of Nordic design thinking in Australia for more than two decades. The topics at right represent four broad streams of Boyd’s engagement with Nordic architecture, all of which he returned to over many years.