This article proposes the concept of ‘material politics’ as an analy-tical category for the field of Nordic welfare history. We suggest thatour understanding of welfare as a socio-cultural and historicalphenomenon can be further enriched if we engage analyticallywith the multiple ways in which the Nordic welfare societies havebeen imagined, materialized and negotiated through various formsof material networks, architecture and devices. Thus, to elucidatethe analytical potential of material politics for welfare history, webegin the article by surveying recent interdisciplinary research onthe entanglements of materiality and power. Specifically, we pointto three approaches to material politics that, we suggest, are parti-cularly relevant for the field of welfare history. In the second part ofthe article, we explore the applicability of material politics byexamining two empirical cases, both related to urban water andbathing, that exhibit different ways in which materiality havehelped to problematize, mediate and signify different aspects ofurban welfare politics in 20th-century Denmark. In doing so, wehope to spur further scholarly dialogue about the analytical cate-gories through which we approach and interpret the social andcultural meaning of welfare in modern Nordic societies.