Also common in early farm structures in America too which could likely be due to large immigration from Scandinavia. The iron oxide acts as an anti-fungal as well.
No one (well almost no one) in Norway would call that luxurious, it's what you paint the cowshed or other agricultural buoldings with. Almost no one here would paint a residential building that colour not even a hytte (cabin) in the mountains. It's one of the few class related behaviours that I can think of in Norway. Once white paint became available wooden residential buildings (that's most residential buildings) of any quality would be painted white and south of Drammen mostly still are. Cabins are normally beiset (originally a kind of two component grey or brown stain, now more properly a varnish).
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red