Vikingsholm
— — the house with a meadow on its roof.
Not only on a wall.
“A 38-room Scandinavian-revival house built in 1929 at the head of Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe's west shore. Lora Josephine Knight, a Chicago heiress, commissioned the Swedish-born architect Lennart Palme to design it after she had toured the fjords of Norway and Sweden. The walls are local granite, the timbers were hand-hewn, and the sod roof grows wildflowers each spring. The house is reached only by a steep one-mile foot trail down from Highway 89, or by boat across the bay. Fannette Island, the only island in Lake Tahoe, sits in the water just offshore, with a small stone tea house at its summit.
Vikingsholm, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Vikingsholm is a Scandinavian-revival house built in 1929 at the head of Emerald Bay on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, California, inside Emerald Bay State Park. Lora Josephine Knight, a Chicago heiress and patron of arts and exploration, commissioned the house as a summer home after a tour of the Nordic countries; the Swedish-born architect Lennart Palme drew plans modelled on early Norwegian stave-church carpentry and Swedish manor stonework. The completed building has 38 rooms across roughly 12,000 square feet, set against the granite slope above the bay. The estate passed into California State Parks ownership in 1953, and Emerald Bay itself was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1969.
The walls of Vikingsholm are built from granite quarried on site, fitted in places by local stonemasons working without modern mortar courses so that the building would read as older than its 1929 completion date. The roof timbers are hand-hewn, joined without iron nails in the visible joinery, and the dragon-headed roof ridges are carved after the manner of medieval Norwegian stave churches. The sod roof, layered with earth and turf laid over birch bark, was a working traditional roof in Scandinavia for centuries. At Vikingsholm it grows wildflowers each spring and is among the last sod roofs maintained at this scale on the American West Coast.
Vikingsholm is reachable by a one-mile foot trail that drops about 500 feet from the parking lot above Highway 89 on the west rim of Emerald Bay, or by private boat tying up at the small pier on the bay. The trail is steep on the return; an hour each way at an unhurried pace is reasonable. Tours of the interior run roughly Memorial Day through late September, on the hour during open daylight, with a per-person fee paid at the door. The grounds and the small beach are free to walk. Fannette Island, the only island in Lake Tahoe, is visible from the front lawn; landing on the island is closed during the February through mid-June goose nesting season.