At Nordal we have received guests since 1897. The first document stating this fact stems from 1899 when Embjørg Nordal applied for a licence to sell home-brewed beer to travellers and villagers.

The oldest house is a cottage coming from the farm Nigard Bøje. It had three rooms, one rather large one, which today is part of the cafeteria, and two small ones, which is today’s kitchen. The concept was simple, offering service for hungry – and thirsty – customers and a place to sleep for travellers. The last-mentioned had to bring their own furs for bedding on the floor, leaving some of their lice behind… . Pots for spitting of tobacco were standard equipment. Health regulations have seen some changes over the last hundred years!

 

Nordal at the end of the 1890's.

All kinds of people popped in – having errands to the mill or the store or just coming from mass on Sundays. Christmas Days were especially busy, hundreds of cups of coffee were sold on this particular day!

About 1905 the cottage was enlarged with another floor and four new bedrooms. The farming part of the business was developing gradually, a barn and a stable came first: Gabriel Nordal and his son Knut both took great interest in horses. The cowhouse came later. The lands were run together with the Andberg farm, which was owned by the Nordals from 1913 to 1920.

In 1924 the old cowhouse was taken down and replaced by the existing one, bought from Mr. Lars Kolden. There was built a hall on top of the new cowhouse, known as the “Cow Hall”, which was used as an assembly hall till 1938. Then the hall was taken down and rebuilt into a barn. In 1924 they also built a new two-storey house with a dining room, a sitting room and a lounge on the ground floor, five bedrooms on the first floor and two in the attic. Now Nordal Hotel had 11 bedrooms with 25 beds

The second building at Nordal was build in 1925

A notched log house for storing came next. The local telephone company was taken over by the national company and Embjørg Nordal bought the surplus telegraph poles. They cost 1 NKr each collected by the buyer. She had Mr. Elias Kveen to pick the poles up and bring them home on a timber sledge in the winter of 1935. Mr. Simen Kolden and Mr. Tormod Sørhage made NKr 2,50 a day notching the storehouse from the logs. On top of that they had free boarding and thought they were doing well!

The total cost of the storehouse was NKr 800, -, including a concrete basement, serving as a cold-storage chamber.

During the fights in the spring of 1940 the hotel was used as a field hospital and the owners had to move to Sørhage farm living there for six weeks. The bombing of Lom in April destroyed part of the upper building, but it was repaired quickly after.

Traffic was low during the war, except for a group of painters returning summer after summer.

After the war the hotel kept on business under the name Nordal Turistheim. This was the era of tourists going by bus and bike; cars were few. Maria and Tosten Nordal took over business in 1947 and were in charge till Egil Nordal took the reins in 1970. In the period of Maria and Tosten farming came to a definitive end and the place was developed to meet the demands of the steadily increasing traffic.

In 1956 the two original structures were built together with a new one with a new dining room and a pantry on the ground floor and ten new bedrooms on the first and second floor as a result. Furthermore all buildings were faced with new boards and the interior was redecorated. At the end of the 1980s the hotel area was extended with a new reception area and another dining room.

In the1950s the new municipal waterworks made hot and cold water available in every room and there were WCs in the corridors. This was a big step forward! Later reconstruction of the hotel area has not increased the number of beds. On the contrary, an increasing demand for comfort, e.g. a shower and a WC in each room, has resulted in a decrease of the number of rooms. Presently every room in the hotel and the motel has a shower and a WC. The latter was built in 1960 with 8 double bedrooms of the same standard as in the hotel. Today we may offer our guests 48 beds altogether in the hotel and the motel.

The really great expansion came outdoors, however. Farming and the keeping of cattle had to be given up in the 1960s. It all started in the 1950s with campers asking to put up their tents between the racks of hay on the fields, the demand for an organised camp site was obvious and it was established in 1961 along with an Esso petrol station, including toilets for campers. This did not meet the demands at all and a new sanitary installation and a laundry were set up in 1963. The first campsite with its ¼ of an acre soon turned out to be far to small. Ever increasing areas of the farmlands were needed for the campsite. Experience soon showed that cattle and tourism did not go very well together and in the end the animals had to give way for tourists. The cows went first, then the horses. Raising pigs and oxen was tried for a while, but given up very soon. Only the barn and the cowhouse are the present relicts of a long history of farming at Nordal.

The campers now invading fields and meadows demanded higher standards, gradually tents were not good enough. Egil Nordal saw the need and started building cabins in 1962. Today we have 64 cabins of various standards, the simple ones from the 1960s are still in demand, and the new ones are of excellent standard with shower, WC and a sitting room. Increasing traffic necessitated new sanitary installations. Two years after the first one, another was built in a basement opposite Fossheim Hotel. On the ground floor a notched log-house was erected to house retired Maria and Tosten Nordal for their last years. Afterwards it has been used both as a permanent dwelling and a cabin.

The camping site had now taken all of the former farming lands. In the 1970s River Bøvra was canalised by the building of a river wall and thus extending our area substantially. The need for new sanitary installations was met by a third building, increasing our capacity to a total of 400 persons.

 

Municipal area planning, however, reserved a fairly big part of this area for future road construction. And if the road were built, Nordal would have to remove their cabins without compensation. The plans are now abandoned and the cabins will remain!

To give our guests the best of service, facilities for washing and ironing clothes, shower and WC, were not enough. Wayfaring people also needed a place to buy groceries and other things, especially out of opening hours. At Nordal a small kiosk was the starting point. Towards the end of the 1960s, the first real snack bar in the county of Oppland was opened. Architect was Mr. Torjørn Fjeldstad. It has been extended and rebuilt several times to meet shifting demands.

Traffic at the first Esso petrol station from 1960 was small, especially in winter. This situation changed when regulations on the sales of private cars were done away with in the beginning of the 1960s. Traffic increased steadily and there was a need for more room for both installations and goods. In 1987 a brand new petrol station was opened with halls for service and washing of cars. At the same time Tor Gaute Nordal took over the station and his

sister, Anne Marie Nordal and her husband, Lars Bakke were in charge of the hotel.

The cafeteria was opened after a complete rebuilding in 2000. Nordal’s open-air facilities have been extended with a restaurant area rooming 150 guests, a scene and a dance floor.