Orkanger sits where the Orkla river meets the Orkdalsfjord, a branch of the Trondheimsfjord, about 40 km southwest of Trondheim. The town looks ordinary at first glance, a small industrial centre on the E39. But Orkanger produced one of Norway's most ambitious industrial dynasties, and one building with a truly unlikely biography.
Christian Thams (1867-1948) ran the family timber business M. Thams & Co from Bårdshaug manor on the fjord shore. He turned a sawmill into a prefabricated house factory that at its peak employed 300 people, exporting flat-packed buildings across Europe. He founded Orkla Grube-Aktiebolag in 1904 to mine copper at Løkken Verk up the valley. He built a hydroelectric plant at Skjenaldfossen to power his operations. And he constructed the Thamshavnbanen, Norway's first electric railway, opened by King Haakon VII in 1908, to haul ore from the mines to his port at Thamshavn. One man, one valley, an entire industrial ecosystem. The playbook was the same as Sam Eyde's at Rjukan and Notodden in Telemark: secure waterfalls, build power plants, run industry on cheap electricity. Eyde got UNESCO World Heritage status. Thams got a building that spent 124 years in Wisconsin.
That mining company, Orkla Grube-Aktiebolag, is still alive. It merged with Borregaard in 1986, then with Nora Industrier in 1992, and gradually pivoted from copper and pyrite to consumer goods. Today it is Orkla ASA, one of Norway's largest companies. Most people do not recognise the name because Orkla operates like Nestlé, hidden behind dozens of sub-brands: Grandiosa pizza, Nidar chocolate, Stabburet canned goods, Jordan toothbrushes, Møller's cod liver oil. All of it traces back to a copper mine in this valley.
The strangest chapter involves a building. In 1893, Thams was commissioned to create Norway's pavilion for the Chicago World's Fair. His workers built a dragon-style stave church structure in three months, shipped it across the Atlantic on the steamship Hekla, and reassembled it in Chicago. After the fair closed, a Norwegian-American businessman bought it and moved it to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. In 1935, it moved again to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, where it anchored a heritage museum called Little Norway. When Little Norway closed in 2012, the building was dismantled, crated, and shipped back across the Atlantic. In 2017, 124 years after it left, the Thamspaviljongen reopened in Orkanger, a few hundred metres from where it was originally built. It is one of the few surviving structures from the 1893 World's Fair.
The Orkla river that flows through town is also one of Norway's great salmon rivers. British sportsmen arrived in the mid-1800s, leased long stretches of the riverbank, and earned the title Salmon Lords for the scale and ceremony of their fishing expeditions. The river still draws fly fishers from across Europe, with fish regularly exceeding 15 kg.
Bårdshaug manor is now a hotel. The Thamspaviljongen is open to visitors in summer.
Christian Thams (1867-1948) ran the family timber business M. Thams & Co from Bårdshaug manor on the fjord shore. He turned a sawmill into a prefabricated house factory that at its peak employed 300 people, exporting flat-packed buildings across Europe. He founded Orkla Grube-Aktiebolag in 1904 to mine copper at Løkken Verk up the valley. He built a hydroelectric plant at Skjenaldfossen to power his operations. And he constructed the Thamshavnbanen, Norway's first electric railway, opened by King Haakon VII in 1908, to haul ore from the mines to his port at Thamshavn. One man, one valley, an entire industrial ecosystem. The playbook was the same as Sam Eyde's at Rjukan and Notodden in Telemark: secure waterfalls, build power plants, run industry on cheap electricity. Eyde got UNESCO World Heritage status. Thams got a building that spent 124 years in Wisconsin.
That mining company, Orkla Grube-Aktiebolag, is still alive. It merged with Borregaard in 1986, then with Nora Industrier in 1992, and gradually pivoted from copper and pyrite to consumer goods. Today it is Orkla ASA, one of Norway's largest companies. Most people do not recognise the name because Orkla operates like Nestlé, hidden behind dozens of sub-brands: Grandiosa pizza, Nidar chocolate, Stabburet canned goods, Jordan toothbrushes, Møller's cod liver oil. All of it traces back to a copper mine in this valley.
The strangest chapter involves a building. In 1893, Thams was commissioned to create Norway's pavilion for the Chicago World's Fair. His workers built a dragon-style stave church structure in three months, shipped it across the Atlantic on the steamship Hekla, and reassembled it in Chicago. After the fair closed, a Norwegian-American businessman bought it and moved it to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. In 1935, it moved again to Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, where it anchored a heritage museum called Little Norway. When Little Norway closed in 2012, the building was dismantled, crated, and shipped back across the Atlantic. In 2017, 124 years after it left, the Thamspaviljongen reopened in Orkanger, a few hundred metres from where it was originally built. It is one of the few surviving structures from the 1893 World's Fair.
The Orkla river that flows through town is also one of Norway's great salmon rivers. British sportsmen arrived in the mid-1800s, leased long stretches of the riverbank, and earned the title Salmon Lords for the scale and ceremony of their fishing expeditions. The river still draws fly fishers from across Europe, with fish regularly exceeding 15 kg.
Bårdshaug manor is now a hotel. The Thamspaviljongen is open to visitors in summer.