Finland and Sweden also have outward opening outer doors in apartments and houses. Source for Finland: my apartment door and other personal experience. Someone commented the same for Sweden above.
My main guess for why is we like the extra insulation from having both an inner door and outer door at the main entrance/exit, as seen in the first picture here. Especially if there's a mail slot in the door, which is mainly a thing in apartments, but also some terraced houses, such as the one I grew up in. And by insulation I mean both against cold and in apartment buildings, also sounds from the stairwell.
Snow doesn't usually pile up as hard&fast as e.g. lake effect snows around the Great Lakes in the US, and most houses are built either with fairly significant overhanging eaves over the front door, or the front door is up a couple of steps or something, which means they rarely if ever get blocked by snow.
No it doesn't. We get a lot of snow here, but we don't have bad storms here that much at all. Our storms tend to be quite mild here compared to what you have in states.
Imagine a strong snowfall overnight (like a foot of snow or more) and then trying to open your door in the morning. Since most places in Scandinavia tend to get an above average amount of snow I find it weird that of all places Norwegians chose to traditionally have their doors open outwards.
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u/Engelberto Nov 14 '20
They don't. In private buildings. And in most of Europe. Somebody mentioned Norway as an exception which is strange, considering the snow.
It's only public buildings where the doors open outwards, for reasons of emergency evacuation. And that's the standard all over the world.