Melbo Manor

The venerable Melbo Manor shows where entrepreneur Christian Frederiksen and his family lived. A guide will take guests into the house and tell the story. A 12 minute picture game gives a mood and an overview of the activity that was at Melbu at the beginning of the 20th century.

It was Christian Frederiksen, a 17-year-old man from Melbu, who started what we might call the industrial revolution in mini format at Melbu. Over a 30-year period, in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Melbu was transformed from a large farm to the region’s largest industrial centre. The population increased from 77 inhabitants in 1891 to about 1000 in 1920. Christian Frederiksen’s philosophy was to exploit the local raw material and process it as much as possible himself.

The garden was designed in english landscape style in 1890, and today there is an assortment of old perennials collected from Vesterålen and Lofoten. Footpaths wind from the garden and further into the idyllic park.