A modest farmhouse went up on this spot outside Orkanger in 1860, and it might have stayed modest if Christian Thams, an architect, industrialist, and consul with a taste for the world, hadn’t bought it in 1890. Thams spent fourteen years transforming the farmhouse into an elaborate manor, filling it with a dining room of carved woodwork, a hunting-themed library from his African travels, and a bridal suite furnished in King Louis style dating to 1780.
He’d go on to design homes for figures like Brigitte Bardot’s family and Gustave Eiffel, and Bårdshaug drew Norwegian and European nobility in turn, hosting King Oscar II of Sweden, King Leopold of Belgium, and Norway’s King Olav V. Thams eventually fled to Paris after a string of legal troubles and never returned. The manor remains much as he left it, alongside a stave-church-style pavilion he designed for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which spent 123 years in the United States before returning to stand across from the hotel.