Our history

Aasmund and Anne Marie

We are your hosts and welcome you to Kolstad farm where we live, and to the boutique farmhouse hotel at Kolstad Store. In addition to welcoming guests, we are meat and dairy farmers. On our farm you can meet cattle, sheep, chickens and a cat. In the summertime we often have bottle lambs that will love to get to know you!

Vetle Kolstad

Vetle Kolstad is the original name of Kolstad farm. Aasmund is the 10th generation of Kolstad to run this farm. He can trace his roots back to Johannes Kolstad who bought it from the Danish-Norwegian king in 1650.

However, the first person to settle down here might have been a Viking named Koll. For in the first centuries after year 0, the first part of Norwegian place names where the first names of those who settled there. The thickness of the soil also tells us that it has been used for growing food for 2000 years.

There are several traces of the past close to our farm. Right next to the Kingsroad that passes Kolstad, is a place that has been used as a training camp for the military. Coins, buttons and buckles found here, tell us of much activity from the early 1600s until the 1800s. It might even have been a market place.

A map from 1764 shows Kolstad as a place where people could change horses when travelling long distances. Documents found on the farm also tell us that there were many horses here in the 1700s. Those were bountiful years. Later, times were harder. The farm was nearly sold to someone outside of the family.

The son of farmer Peder Kolstad, Sigurd, was one of the many Norwegians that emigrated to North America during these trying times. Before leaving, in 1892, we got engaged to the neighbor’s daughter, Ingeborg. She waited patiently for four years and in 1896 they got married. In addition to running the farm at Vetle Kolstad, they welcomed guests at their summertime farm in the mountains. We still have books with greetings from walkers and fishing tourists that stopped by.

Another Sigurd inherited the farm in the early 1970s, together with his wife Marit. They are Aasmunds parents. Him and his wife Anne Marie keep the tradition alive today and this is where there four children Eline, Sigurd, Ragna Lovise, and Live Marie grew up. In 2011 they were offered the neighboring farm Kolstad Store, and this place also has a rich history.

Kolstad Store

Store Kolstad. Foto: Anton Henriksen Skotte.

As far back as we can trace the sources, there has been farming at both Vetle Kolstad and Kolstad Store. In 1835, a total of 51 persons were living in these two farms.

Kolstad Store was one of the largest farms in Lesja. Today, only the main house is left, and we have found the year 1859 carved into one of the ridge beams. That was when the house got its present form, but we can find traces of several older buildings in the construction. Tore Toreson was the name of the man who bought the farm in 1845. Him and his son, Syver’s, initials are also found in the carving.

Syver (1837-1910) married his first wife in 1860. Sadly, she died that same year, and they were childless. Three years later, he married Mari Larsdotter from Dovre. She had also experienced tragedy in her life. When she was 18, she went to a party on a farm at Dovrefjell. She and her sister Anne shared a bed and during the night an intoxicated man snuck into the bedroom and killed Anne. When she married Syver, Mari was 38 years old, 12 years his senior. Her wedding dress is still at Kolstad Store.

The youngest of their three children inherited the farm. His name was Anton (1893-1946). His mother passed in 1892 and two years later his 57-year-old dad became a father once again. Anton sent a letter to his dad, complaining that he had to pay for his child support.

Inside the house we have found the diaries that Anton wrote when he was young. These tell us that the house’s exterior was painted i 1888, and that they invested in some furniture. They also bear witness of hardship and of his great interest in culture, languages, and horse breeding.

At times, Anton must have been very unhappy. He married Åse Hattrem in 1894 and they had six children. All, apart from one girl, died very young. Their mother also passed, only nine years after the wedding. At the time, the only child to survive, Marit, was three years old. At the farm we have found letters that confirm that these were hard times for the farmer.

Fortunately, his luck would change. A photography from 1914 shows Anton Kolstad at a farmer’s convent in the city of Lillehammer. Maybe this was where he met Helene Klundby from Biri? They married in 1918 and Marit got four half siblings. Helene brought new impulses and beautiful furniture to the farm, some of which are still here today. The house was modernized, and a dr. Husebye from Christiania started a private practice at the farm. He installed hot water and a bathtub, but an indoor toilet was a luxury the farm didn’t get until 2005.

Anton wrote many letters to his older and very successful brother Thorvald who lived in Oppdal. He was also a guardian for Anton’s son, Sigurd. It was him that inherited Kolstad Store in 1941. At the time, he was only 18 years old, and the responsibility got too much for him. He suffered from severe psychiatric problems and in 1957 he was no longer allowed to run the farm. When Sigurd died in 1963, it was his sisters, Marit and Signe, that owned the farm together. The farm was run by to brothers from Lom who lived here with there families.

None of Anton Kolstad’s daughters got married or had children. The last of them to live here, were Signe and Synnøve. Signe died in 2009, whilst Synnøve sold Kolstad Store to Aasmund and Anne Marie in 2011. She passed away only three weeks before her 100d birthday, in 2019.