The story of Nermo: The women who built Nermo
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The history of Nermo Hotel: The women who built Nermo
The story of Nermo is often about the men. Grandfather Johannes who hunted moose in Gjæslia. The father, John, who negotiated with the bank. And today's Johannes, who bet everything on the Olympics. But behind each of them stood a woman who made the wheels turn. Without them, there would have been no hotel to run.
For almost 150 years, women have been receiving guests at Nermo. Little is known about the first of them, Lisabeth and Agnete. They lived in a time when women's efforts were rarely written down. But we know that they were there. That they made beds, cooked and received people who knocked on the door. Without them, the next generations would have nothing to build on.
We know more about Gudrun and Anne Gunn.
The third generation: Gudrun, who never took shortcuts
When Gudrun Bergseng married Johannes J. Nermo in 1937, she knew what she was getting into. His family had been welcoming guests for sixty years already. She moved from Lillehammer to the farm in Øyer and became a hostess at a hotel that still bore the marks of the fire five years earlier. Three years later, the war broke out.
By Easter Eve 1932, everything had burned down. When Gudrun came to Nermo five years later, the new building had been erected, but the finances remained tight. In the winter, the family moved from their private home into two rooms in the hotel to save on heating.
But she never skimped on one thing: the food.
From 1951 to 1966, Gudrun kept a menu diary. Every single dinner, every single guest, year after year. 5,475 dinners meticulously recorded and documented in handwriting. The diary shows a hostess who knew that good food is not about shortcuts.
The neighbour’s wife, Brit-Ida Berg Hansen, remembers Gudrun from childhood. In a radio show on Norwegian broadcaster NRK, she talked about the living room at Nermo, which was completely different from the other homes in the village: plenty of sofas, small tables with flowers and picture frames, mirrors from floor to ceiling, paintings and bookshelves. Even a piano.
But what made the strongest impression was the hostess herself. Before each dinner, Gudrun stopped by the kitchen to taste the soup and sauce. Then she went and dressed. In the dining room, the hosts had their own table, and Gudrun always showed up in a pretty dress. Her husband Johannes would wear in a dark suit and tie, with pressed trousers. It wasn't vanity. That's how a hostess showed respect for her guests.
Photo: Nermo Hotell
Grandfather Johannes and grandmother Gudrun in front of the hotel
Photo: Nermo Hotell
Grandfather Johannes and grandmother Gudrun with hotel guests
Photo: Nermo Hotell
Grandmother Gudrun on cross country skis
The fourth generation: Anne Gunn, who learned from her grandmother
Anne Gunn Tofte grew up on the farm Slette in Heidal. There, she learned something that would shape her as a hostess.
Her grandmother, who was also named Gudrun, was a farmhand at Slette. It happened that she had just lit a fire to bake flatbread when there were unannounced guests in the yard. Then she turned off the heat and let the baking wait. The guests came first.
Anne Gunn brought that lesson with her when she married John Nermo in 1967 and moved to Øyer.
"From the first day at Nermo, I have tried to be as good a housewife as possible," she says. "I was young and relatively inexperienced, but I really wanted to be a hostess that the guests thought was present. Ideally, a good hostess should just drop what she has in her hands and concentrate on the guest if he or she has a question."
Anne Gunn was a hostess at Nermo for almost forty years. When the Royal Marines rented the hotel in the 1980s, she organised the civilian aid the British needed. When the bobsleigh and toboggan track at Hunderfossen opened before the Olympics, she became the hotel's "bobsleigh ambassador" and travelled to congresses all over Europe to promote Nermo.
It worked. The Italian toboggan team has been staying at Nermo every single winter since 1995.
A common thread
There is a line from Gudrun, who tasted the sauce before dinner, to Anne Gunn, who left off baking when the guests arrived. Both chose the role of host above all else. Both stood behind the scenes and made sure the wheels turned.
Today, Johannes runs Nermo, as the fifth generation of the family. But the philosophy he steers by is the same one that Grandmother Gudrun insisted on in the basement with the potato peeling knife: everything must be first-class, otherwise, it's not worth doing.
He didn't learn that philosophy at hospitality school. He learned it from the women at Nermo.
