Symbolism was the prevailing new movement in Danish art around 1900. Among those artists who were part of the break away from naturalism in the 1890s, we find a renewed interest in the art of drawing, and the pictures of the era are characterised by a striking formal precision. But what was the deeper objective behind this keen interest in well-defined plastic and two-dimensional forms, details and decorative overall effects? Hieroglyphs seeks answers to this question in literature from the period and in artists such as Vilhelm Hammershøi, L.A. Ring, J.F. Willumsen, Johannes Holbek and Jens Lund.