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This spectacular structure dazzled visitors at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where it was the official exhibit building for Norway. The design is based on a twelfth-century Norwegian wooden church, or stavkirke at Gol, which Hansteen had helped restore. In the Norway Building, Hansteen strayed from historical accuracy by adding windows, which are not found in true stave churches. He also incorporated elements of an architectural aesthetic that was popular in Norway in his own time: the so-called "Dragon style," named for the wooden dragons atop the peaks of the gables, breathing flame to ward off evil spirits. As that description suggests, the "Dragon style" combined Christian and pagan elements, the latter derived from Viking ships, burial sites, and folk art.
The building's frame consists of a grid of crossed, hand-hewn logs with vertical wooden staves tying the logs to the rafters. Sheltering the building is a dramatic, steeply pitched, multi-layered roof with bellcast eaves that turn up at the corners. The gabled entry at center leads the eye upward to a gabled wall dormer and finally to a gabled cupola. Spindle columns, scalloped bargeboards, and diamond patterns ornament the gable ends. Elaborately carved wooden window surrounds, zoomorphic wooden sculptures around the entry, and ornate ridge crestings enhance the Nordic appearance. The fire-breathing dragons atop the ridge crestings are 1992 reproductions. Inside, the carved faces of kings and queens from Norse sagas peer down from the wooden beams.
M. Thams and Company, a manufacturer of prefabricated housing in Trondheim, Norway, constructed the building in Norway, then shipped it in panels for assembly in Chicago. It is one of few surviving structures from the Columbian Exposition. After the fair, it was disassembled and moved to a Lake Geneva estate. Chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr., later purchased the estate and used this building to screen home movies. His son Philip donated the building to the founder of Little Norway, Isak Dahle, in 1935. It served as a folk-art museum until 2012.
In 2015, the current owners sold the pavilion to the Norwegian city of Orkdal, where the building was reassembled and restored. It was rededicated in September 2017 as the “Thams Pavilion.”
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
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Little Norway
June 1939
Elevated view of the tourist attraction Little Norway, situated in an idyllic valley, with the stave church in the center and a small house at right. There is a picket fence in the foreground and a...
CHAPEL LN, END NEAR LAKE MICHIGAN
25927
Located in Baileys Harbor, Door County
1104 Park Street
02000708
Located in Rothschild, Marathon County
