Drop a Google Streetview in the middle on downtown classical Gothenberg, and try to find a wood construction building. Sweden is about as northern Europe as it gets. Head over to Amsterdam, and it will look pretty similar.
It will be relatively similar to most other major European cities; solid masonry construction has historically been the norm.
You'll find some wooden houses in smaller towns and rural areas, but even there, if you head over to e.g. Poland, most things will be solid masonry. And the wooden construction is mostly relatively new; what you'll rarely find is old wooden construction.
I live in the northern part of Central Europe and have spent over a decade travelling through these countries. Ive worked with log and timber frame construction and have a solid understanding of traditional and modern building methods. I know how buildings are actually made, not just how they look on googles street view...
In Sweden around 80% of standing homes are wooden. About 90% of new single-family homes are timber construction. Gothenburg is an outlier because of 19th-century laws that limited wooden buildings to two storeys, which is why you get the Landshövdingehus with a brick base and wooden upper floors.
The Netherlands is western Europe, not northern or central. That’s basic geography...
Timber is the dominant material in residential construction across Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Denmark is more mixed, and Poland leans more towards masonry, but the south has a strong timber tradition, especially in the Tatra region.
And even in places like Germany or Denmark where it looks like brick, it's often just a clinker façade over a timber or frame structure. It’s aesthetic, not structural.
Honestly, it's laughable to compare the dense inner city to the massive volume of buildings outside it. You're looking at a fraction and pretending it's the whole. It’s just not serious.
