Scandinavia rightfully belongs to Rainer Maria Rilke’s spiritual geography. Scandinavia, which he visited for a few months in 1904, long remained a place of interest for the poet. Though being interested in anything Scandinavian was fashionable at his time, Rilke soon experienced an intellectual affinity with some Nordic authors, which he expressed in many letters and acute and passionate reviews. The Scandinavian period in Rilke’s artistic development took place between the Russian and the French ones, playing no small role in the writing of Malte (1910). Even so, the poet kept the interest in that culture alive, while appreciating – not without a certain amount of idealisation – the tendency of the Nordic countries to be social laboratories. Many authors make up this constellation of significant references for Rilke, who saw in their works a model as well as a reflection of his own sensibility. In this paper we will try to point out the salient features of Rilke’s relationship with the Nordic culture, its development and its paradoxical aspects, by focusing on those reviews which are best suited to understand his view of the Scandinavian world.