In 2007, master watchmaker Patrik Sjögren and master bladesmith Johan Gustafsson met and discovered their mutual love for Scandinavian culture and a passion for indigenous crafts. This meeting gave birth to the Swedish brand Gustafsson & Sjögren, or GoS watches. The design codes of GoS watches pay tribute to the history and natural landscapes of Scandinavia. The watches are made with hand-forged Damascus steel, which is recognisable with its distinctive patterns, therefore making each GoS watch unique. 

The Nordic Seasons collection, with Swiss manual ETA 6498 movement, as the name suggests, celebrates the seasons of the region with beautiful dials in a distinct shade each for winter, summer, spring, and autumn. The Aurora (with ETA 6498 calibre) and ​​Norrsken collections bring alive the beauty of the Northern Lights on the colourful dials, with the latter powered by Calibre GoS03 created by Schwarz-Etienne with a customised micro-rotor in Damascus steel. The line Sarek pays an ode to the landscapes and flora of a valley in the Sarek National Park in Swedish Lapland, and is driven by La Joux-Perret G101 or a Soprod A10 movement featuring a GoS triskele rotor, a design inspired by the ancient motif of spirals in rotational symmetry. There is also the Väring watch that pays homage to local Viking leader Väring, who returned to Kareby village after regaining the throne from the English in 1016; since bronze was the most common metal used by the Vikings, GoS created the Väring watch in the same metal housing the GoS02 calibre based on the Technotime TT718. Other timepieces in GoS’s collections include Skadi (Winter Goddess in Norse Mythology) with a white mother-of-pearl dial, red gold with Damascus steel, and Soprod Chronometre grade 6498 movement.  

The latest in the brand is the collaboration piece with Swedish fashion designer Martin Key. The timepiece features the artist’s signature design, the octagon, in an 18K gold chamfered index ring studded with purple and black diamonds serving as hour markers. The colour scheme of gold, purple, and black is another significant aesthetic of Key’s creations. Driving it is the customised La Joux-Perret G101 movement.

Apart from the use of Damascus steel, all GoS collections feature numerical-free dials with polished dauphine hands, a standout index ring in various designs, and different crowns. Since 2015, GoS has been using straps made from moose leather, popular in Sweden. The watches are also presented in boxes made from Swedish Crystal since 2019. 

Founded by Magnus Äppelryd and Johan Sahlin in 2011, Bravur is driven by its passion for watches and cycling. From the workshop located in Båstad, Sweden, every Bravur watch comes out handmade. The brand offers both automatic and 

quartz watches. 

The automatic collections include Team Heritage, the latest line unveiled last year, which pays tribute to the 1950s and 1980s, the golden days of cycling, and the colourful jerseys of the cyclists. The Grand Tour Chronograph series celebrates iconic cycling races such as the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia, and Vuelta a España; the Geography Series is a collection of GMT watches; and the Scandinavia collection embraces Nordic culture and its minimalist design approach. The Bravur x Wingårdh Limited Edition watches are designed in partnership with Swedish architect Gert Wingårdh and his award-winning designer son Rasmus Wingårdh. The two watches are created in ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ versions, inspired by the Scandinavian light and the Swedish west coast. Bravur uses Swiss movements for all automatic collections. There is also the BW003 line, which features coloured sunray-brushed dials, and is powered by Sellita SW300-1, while the BW001 and BW002 are the brand’s quartz collections, with a design approach that is more minimalistic. 

Although most of the timepieces have a minimalistic Scandinavian aesthetic, Bravur does not shy away from the use of colours in its sports watches—they are simple yet vibrant. In 2024, the brand added Grand Tour La Corsa Rosa IV to the Grand Tour collection, a chronograph watch that takes cues from the Giro D’Italia, and is coloured in shades of pink.

The one brand on the forefront of Swedish watchmaking is Sjöö Sandström—it is credited with creating the first Swedish wristwatch, and the first ever dive watch to have been designed and made in Sweden. 

The story of Sjöö Sandström began in 1986 in Stockholm when two engineers and watch enthusiasts, Christer Sjöö and Mikael Sandström, came together with the idea of combining craftsmanship with technology. In 1993, they presented their first handmade watch, the elegant Automatic S1 with a white dial, also the first wristwatch of Sweden—it won the Excellent Swedish Design award in 1995. The Landsort was the first Swedish diver’s watch created in 2011 with a water resistance up to 459 metres, the depth of the deepest ravine in the Baltic sea, called the Landsort Deep. The next achievement for the brand in the same year was the UTC Skydiver, made as an official watch for the Swedish Airforce in collaboration with Swedish fighter pilots, and meeting 35 military requirements and demands. In 2014, Sjöö Sandström also collaborated with the Swiss movement maker, Vaucher, to include the Caliber 5400 in its watch Royal Capital, a 50-piece limited edition of a 40mm stainless steel dress watch with a date complication.

The brand maintains the classic Scandinavian approach to its watches’ designs, minimalistic and functional, though there’s an impressive use of colours on the dials. The current men’s collections include UTC Skydiver, UTC Extreme, Royal Steel Worldtimer, Royal Steel Classic, Royal Steel Chronograph 35.5mm, Royal Capital, Landsort 459m, and Jubilee Steel. Their offerings for women includes the sub-collections Royal Steel Chronograph in 35.5mm in both diamond and non-diamond versions; Royal Steel Worldtimer 36mm, a GMT watch in various dial colours and bracelet/strap versions; and Royal Steel Classic 36mm and Royal Steel Classic 32mm, both with various dial colours and gem-set and non-gem versions. 

Arcanaut was founded by Anders Brandt and Simon Goldeman when they met in 2015 in a bar in Copenhagen, where Brandt spotted Goldeman’s complicated watch that had a hefty price tag. The two struck up a conversation, which led to friendship, which eventually led to them establishing Arcanaut. A portmanteau of the Danish words arcane (hidden knowledge) and naut (traveller), its watches are simple, minimalist with sharp lines, made in stainless steel, and with dials crafted with unusual Scandinavian materials. The brand employs Soprod A10 Swiss mechanical movement in its watches, however, the final assembly is only done in Copenhagen.

Arcanaut released its first series, the ARC-I in 2018, and in 2020, Canadian material expert James Thompson, popularly known as Black Badger, joined Arcanaut as the co-owner and Chief of Materials Development. Its current Arc II series has two sub-collections—Composites and Fordite. Timepieces in the Composites line are named after their dial materials, like D’Arc Matter, made from grinding Swedish slate stone using industrial coffee grinder; Havender, which is obtained from grinding inner layers of mussel shells; or Klint that is a mix of titanium dioxide with ultra-clear binding agent, among others. Fordite, on the other hand, takes inspiration from the auto industry of the 1970s to 1990s. Its handmade dials are technically the byproduct of the automotive industry, like the over-sprayed paint on cars that has hardened to form a unique design. 

For the third sub-collection, the Experimental, unveiled in 2024, the brand creates materials that born of experiments. The brand also calls out to the public for the ideas. There’s the Bonehead model, which Black Badger created accidentally-on-purpose by mixing a chunk of aerospace-grade aluminium with an opaque resin. The resulting material was attached to a disc of electric-blue lume, creating a glowing dial with a distinct ‘marrow-esque’ pattern. The other in the line is the Tiger Sh’Arc, whose case is made with zirconium titanium composite (also called Zircuti), giving the case a pattern a lot like that of the skin of a tiger shark.

Norway’s Von Doren was established in 2016 by Øyvind VonDoren Asbjørnsen who started his journey in watches at the age of 12 when he inherited a Swiss watch from his great grandfather. Although a young brand, Von Doren brings uniqueness in its timepieces through vintage aesthetics derived from the stories of Norway. Its cases are all crafted in surgical steel, and topped with double-dome sapphire-crystal.

Currently Von Doren has several collections. There’s the Il Tempo Gigante Automatisk Kronograf in 41mm with black and brown colour variants, which takes inspiration from the iconic Norwegian stop-motion film The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (1975). Its running seconds hand looks like a radar display; the chronograph seconds hand features a crosshair; and the chapter and hands are filled with Super-LumiNova® BGW9 that glows blue in the dark. Powering it is the La Joux-Perret L112.

Other collections in Von Doren’s arsenal include the Treasuremaster whose story comes from the sunken gold that was carried by the Dutch ship Akerendam in 1725, and was discovered outside of Runde, Norway. This time-only watch has a simple sunray dial in blue or green with leaf hands, and the case is flanked with a brown leather strap. The other collection is called Runde, named after the bird island of Runde located in the outskirts of Ålesund. The unique dials of the Runde collection have a sunburst effect and change according to the effect of light.

The latest offering from the brand is Tandberg, inspired by Vebjørn Tandberg, a Norwegian engineer and industry leader. The watch case here is rectangular featuring a minimalist dial with muted blue tones, inspired by the frequency indicator of Tandberg’s TR20 series of radios. The blue tone is found in the lume of the hands and the ellipse on the edge of the dial.

Based in Finland, De Motu is heavily inspired by aviation. Aviators Valdemar Hirvelä and Markku Lehti established the brand in 2007, and until today, the brand operates and makes watches at the aircraft hangar of the Helsinki-Malmi Airport in Finland. De Motu specifically makes pilot watches, often collaborating with aviation and military units to create unique timepieces using Swiss movements. The brand presented the world’s first G-force wristwatch, the De Motu DMG in 2004. The timepiece is a non-commercial watch intended only for professional stunt and fighter pilots.

The design codes for watches differ subtly for each collection. The latest line, DMW, powered by ETA 2842-2, brings you a clean dial with enlarged indexes and numericals and wide hands, all filled with lume, complemented by a big date window; the round case is in polished, brushed, or DLC-coated steel. The DMF 44 MK I, a 64-piece limited edition, is made with titanium and flaunts the circle-in-a-square aesthetic. It also has lume-filled large indexes and wide hands, taking cues from runway and rear view of airplanes. Similar dials are seen in the DM Zulu, with a reduced date window and additional dual time zone complication; and the R42, resembling the aircraft cockpit. One interesting timepiece is the DMG-11 which not only has a g-meter to measure g-force but also an accelerometer that can measure aircraft speeds up to 11g or 385 km/h during a flight. 

Finnish watchmaker Stepan Sarpaneva started his eponymous brand in 2003, creating neo-gothic timepieces with different interpretations of the moon as their signature motif. For Stepan, the moon is his muse, and he likes to call it “his best friend and his worst enemy”, so much so that in 2018 he created and named his in-house movement Moonment®, which can show moonphases precisely for the next 14,000 years, tracing the moon cycle to either the Northern or the Southern hemisphere. With a 57-hour power reserve, this movement was first encased inside the Sarpaneva Lunations watch. Another interesting design code for the Sarpaneva watches is the use of lume. This can be seen in most of his collections, though significant would be the Sarpaneva x Moomin Limited Editions, a collaborative piece made with Swedish-Finnish comic illustrator Tove Jansson, the creator of Moomins; and the Sarpaneva Näkki, which is inspired by a Scandinavian folklore and features different colours of Super-LumiNova® that create a captivating dial.

Sarpaneva also has a signature Korona case made with alternately polished and brushed Finnish-forged stainless steel with scalloped edges. This case has been used for the Stardust and Stardust Nostromo watches. Taking his love for the moon to next levels, Stepan has now unveiled the Supermoon, a limited edition of 12 that has a skeletonised dial depicting a cloudy night sky or the vast outer space. The moon, 12mm in diameter and crafted from white gold, takes its prominent place on the dial.

This story was published in WatchTime India’s Jan-Mar 2025 issue