Bårdshaug Herregård

Bårdshaug Herregård
Here at Orkanger in Sør Trøndelag, Norway's first producer of prefabricated buildings was located. Christian Thams designed and exported log buildings throughout the world at the end of the 1800's - everything from casinos and churches to homes and railway stations. He also started a mine and built Norway's first electric railway.

Beautiful Bårdshaug
If we look behind the scenes at Bårdhaug Herregård, we will we will find one of the most exciting industrial adventures in Norway's history. Here we will see the main character standing majestically amongst kings and princes, but also with lumbermen, miners and railwaymen.

The majestic manor at Orkanger in Sør Trøndelag was the home of its founder and man of the world, Christian Thams - architect, minister, landowner and consul.

The jump in the Thames
Christian's great, great, great, great grandfather was English. During the religious conflicts in England during the 1600's, he had to jump into the Thames River to avoid his persecutors. It is told that he made his way on board a Danish ship, which saved his life. As thanks, he took the name Thams. The boat later brought him to Norway.

Christian Thams was born in Trondheim in 1867. His great grandfather, Jacob Thullin Thams, was a member of the constitutional assembly at Eidsvoll in 1814, and his grandfather started a sawmill in Trøndelag about fifty years later. On the year that Christian was born, his grandfather William established a steam powered saw mill at Orkanger, and his father, Marentius, started exported fresh salmon from the same place - a project that really took off in 1870. The fish was transported in ice from 200 icehouses along the Norwegian coast.

If we jump ahead in time, we would find today the industrial concern called Orkla. Here we would also find the stately Bårdshaug Manor house. A lot has happened between then and now.

After the success with salmon, the sawmill expanding to include a planing mill. After awhile, Strandheim Brug joined up with one of the giants in Norwegian lumbering at that time, Tostrup og Mathiesen. The headquarters were located in Paris.

Norway's first prefab building factory
When papa Marentius Thams retired at 56, the stage was set for the son, Christian. Before that he had to go through a thorough education. At 12 years old, he was sent to the Breidenstein boarding school in Switzerland and later continued with an architectural education in Zurich. After that he started his own architect firm in Nice, France and was especially interested in technical improvements. When a strong earthquake hit the Riviera in 1888 - and Christian witnessed the brick buildings fall down like a deck of cards - he decided to start the production and export of Norwegian wooden buildings. These could be set up quickly, and they could withstand a blow. This was the inspiration for the first prefab building factory in Norway's history, established in Strandheim at "Orkedalsøren". The factory also probably published history's first prefab building catalog with a pricelist! A church with 650 seats - without a gallery, cost the net price of 1390 £. You could get a villa in an Italian style for 725 £. A railway station was priced at 555 £ - 40 £ extra if you wanted it packed in iron boxes!

During the course of a few years, there were Thams-buildings throughout Europe as well as several places in the US, South America and even in India.

Brigitte Bardot and Wrigley
The Norwegian pavilion at the Chicago Exhibition in 1893 was drawn by Thams and was built in Orkanger. The pavilion is a true copy of a Norwegian stave church, and after the exhibition was over, the building was bought by the American chewing gum giant, Wrigley. Today the pavilion is an immigration museum in Little Norway in the US. Also the pavilion and summer residence of King Leopold of Belgium was a prefab from Orkanger. Brigitte Bardot's childhood home in Paris was a Christian Thams' work - the film star's grandparents bought it after the world's fair in the French capital in 1889. At the same world's fair, Thams received two gold medals for architectural excellence. Tower builder, Gustav Eiffel was so impressed with Thams' buildings that he ordered an office building for his own use from Strandheim Brug!

Around the turn of the century, the factory in Orkanger was Norway's largest and most modern of its type. In 1890 Christian Thams bought Bårdshaug Herregård - originally the parsonage at Orkanger. He built the building in several styles and drew the plans himself. The result was a distinctive manor house and a unique sight in the area. Then as now.

Exclusive
It took two years to make the special wooden carvings in the dining room. The library is influenced by Christian Thams' great hobby - big game hunting. This he did, amongst other places, in the area around his residence in Nairobi in Africa. The wall clock was made by the clock maker Ingebrikt Eggan from the neighboring community of Rennebu - he also designed the clock for the royal palace in Denmark. The bathroom is special. Taking its date into consideration, it was very advanced with, among other things, a faucet and a thermometer that showed the water's temperature. It has been told that King Haakon VII was very impressed with this room and said that not even his father-in-law, the King of England, had such a fine bath! On the second floor is the bridal suite - originally the bedroom to Thams' first wife, baroness Sarah Sybille Françoise Antoinette Eléonore de Splenger! This bedroom has the building's finest furniture in the Louis Seize style from 1780. The King's room on the same floor is named after Oscar II who was the first king to visit Bårdshaug after it was completed in 1902. The Prince of Monaco, King Leopold of Belgium and our own king Olav V are amongst the other notabilities that have stayed at the Trøndelag manor house.

Founder Thams
Christian Thams was not only an architect and a businessman. After the mine at Løkken Verk had stopped production for some years - after more than 200 years of production - Thams started up again the extracting of pyrites. He used modern techniques to make easier the extraction and production. He received a concession to run a railway and built a railway between løkken and Orkanger - or the Thamshavn as it was called. On July 10, 1908, King Haakon went onboard a specially constructed royal railway car for the official opening of Norway's first electric railway. The royal railway car - which is still used for special ceremonies today - was decorated with buffalo skin and exotic wood and had spectacular chandeliers. Thams was known to be very vain, and those who knew him were unsure if the royal railway car was built for the king or for Thams. The text, which accompanied a picture of the two in a local newspaper after the opening, showed that the consul had a high status also in the eyes of others - it was written, … "the man to the left of Consul Thams is his Royal Highness". Electrical power - both to the railway and the mine - was gotten by Thams by building a hydroelectric plant in a waterfall nearby. Here we find the start to the industrial concern that today is called Orkla. Thams also established an industrial company together with Prince Albert of Monaco. The company ran, among other things, a plantation in Africa - this was also ran from Paris. Christian Thams was engaged in international diplomacy and had many notable duties - among others, he was the Belgium Consul. Han was also a jury member for several international exhibitions.

Sad exit
Christian Thams was the largest taxpayer north of Dovre. He paid tax to 33 municipalities and employed, at the most, 800 workers in central Norway. In 1918, Thams was to sell some shares to one of his cousins, "as cheap as possible" - as it was written in the contract. When the cousin had discovered that Thams five years later had sold the shares at twice the price, a lawsuit ensued. In 1931, a decision was handed down in the Supreme Court where Thams was found to have committed fraud. He was also ordered to pay almost NOK 120,000 in compensation to the cousin. Thams, who was in Paris at the time, never came back to Norway. The compensation sum was never paid either. When the decision, after ten years, was statute-barred, Thams wanted to return home again. That never happened and he died in Paris on May 22, 1948 - 80 years old.

Hotel
Today's Bårdshaug largely looks like it did in Thams' time with a mixture of international architecture and the national romantic tradition. The interior and decorations from all parts of the world attest to the fact that Thams was a man of the world. Bårdshaug is therefore a much-coveted place for accommodations, parties and conferences. It is still possible to stay overnight in historic surroundings - not least for those who want to fish for salmon in one of Norway's best salmon rivers, the Orkla.

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