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In 2019 and 2021, two timber skyscrapers were completed on opposite sides of the Scandinavian peninsula. At 85 metres, Mjøstårnet (Voll Arkitekter, 2019) in Brumunddal, Norway was briefly the tallest timber building in the world, and at 80 metres, Sara kulturhus (White arkitekter, 2021) in Skellefteå, Sweden was the second. Mjøstårnet and Sara kulturhus are gaining international attention for pushing the boundaries of the so-called ‘Scandinavian effect’ (Bonner & Kara, 2020), one that combines the quintessential Nordic building material (Mäntysalo & Nymanbe, 2000) with a new sensibility: one that tries to acknowledge the environmental impact of making buildings while at the same time reinvigorating the tarnished image of the skyscraper. This paper positions itself against this newly emergent literature about the environmental consequences of contemporary architecture and the established body of research on Metamodernism.