A collaboration between the North House Folk School and the North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum has resulted in this beautiful boat-sheltering structure, a Norwegian grindbygg. Above: North House instructor Peter Henrikson traveled to Norway to learn the art of constructing a grindbygg. Left: North House students prepared the pieces and carefully assembled them on campus. The grindbygg will be moved to the Commercial Fishing Museum in Tofte this summer.
The North Shore Commercial Fishing Museum in Tofte has some wonderful artifacts donated by North Shore fishing families. One item, the Viking, a fishing boat owned by fisherman Walt Sve, was on display outside at the museum until it was realized that sitting unprotected was damaging the historic fishing vessel. The museum decided it needed a shelter and it turned to the North House Folk School for help. This summer the Viking will be returned to the museum where it will rest in a grindbygg, a Norwegian structure.
When Fishing Museum Director Don Hammer consulted with North House Instructor Peter Henrikson, Henrikson knew just what was needed. He told Hammer that the museum should construct a grindbygg, a structure that would have been familiar to the fishermen who immigrated to the North Shore. It is a building technique that has been used as long ago as the Bronze Age.
But how to build one? Henrikson applied for—and obtained—an Arrowhead Regional Arts Council/ McKnight Foundation grant and traveled to Norway to master the craft of building a grindbygg. He learned that the basic form of a grindbygg frame is similar to many European and American timber frames: posts held together by tie beams and topped by wall plates supporting common rafters.
However, he explains, there are no mortises or tenons. The tie beam sits in a slot cut into the top of the post. The “plate” sits on the tie beam and against the top of the post. All the bracing is let into the sides of the timbers and pegged. And what gives the structure its distinctive style is that the braces are often made from naturally curved birch or root knees.
Back in Cook County, Henrikson set out to build a grindbygg, recruiting North House students to carve and erect the structure. On March 1, the students under Henrikson’s watchful eye fit together the carefully peeled and carved logs to create the beautiful framed structure.
The wood is all local— the tamarack is from near Brule River on the Gunflint Trail, logged out by Kent Anderson, the beams are white pine from Hedstrom Lumber and when finished, there will be a rough-sawn roof of red pine, also from Kent Anderson.
The grindbygg now sits on the North House Folk School campus in Grand Marais but will be disassembled in August and moved to the Tofte museum, where it will serve as a boat shelter as grindbyggs have for centuries.
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