History
The Plahte Estate is one of the largest privately owned areas in Norway. It covers 160,000 acres, offering a variety of scenery ranging from fjords and varied forests to vast mountain plateaus. Only 12,000 acres are suited for forestry, so our main source of income today is offering exclusive hunting and fishing.
We are 3 people permanently engaged in running the estate, and about 10 people are hired as needed.
It all began with Julius Jakhelln from Bodø, who was short on supplies for his lumber company in Spain. He was offered and bought large forest-covered areas in Bindal and established a sawmill on Risøya, a small island at the outlet of Bindalsfjorden. In 1877, he invited his Norwegian friend, Frithjof Plahte, who had established a prosperous lumber business in England, to become his associate. Frithjof Plahte accepted, bought a large farm and property at Høvik, outside Oslo, and ran his business with Jakhelln from there.
They later also became the founders of several important industrial enterprises in Norway. The Spanish lumber enterprise was renamed “La Compañía de Maderas,” and sailing ships carried timber from Risøya to Spain, the Netherlands, and England. Only lumber from large-sized trees was in demand, and by 1885, most of those large trees had all been harvested. That same year, a law was passed by the government which forbade the export of timber from northern Norway. As a result, the sawmill and community at Risøya closed down, and both Jakhelln and Plahte saw more problems than solutions in the near future. Ownership was settled by a secret bid drawn from a hat, resulting in Frithjof Plahte becoming the sole owner of the estate.
Frithjof Plahte died in 1899, leaving the estate to his widow, Marie Plahte. She was strongly attached to Bindal, spent her summers at Terråk, and remained very conscious of her responsibilities to everything and everybody until her death in 1937.
In connection with the financial setbacks and banking crisis in the 1920’s, Viktor Plahte mortgaged, and later lost, his half of the estate in Bindal. It was bought back in 1931 by Frithjof Möinichen, who married Asta Poulsson the same year. They moved to Terråk and started building the new Bindalsbruket, with a hydropower plant, sawmill, planing mill, a door and window factory, a quay, etc. Plahte had a Master’s degree in Forestry from the University of Toronto in Canada, and became a pioneer in introducing modern forest management in Norway.
Asta and Frithjof M. Plahte’s son, Frithjof Herbert, took over the estate in 1964. He further developed Bindalsbruket into a highly efficient, modern industry and oversaw the long-term management of the forests and the estate. The state of the market in the 1970’s, as well as unwise central political decisions, however, forced the company to refinance in 1976. The industry was separated from the rest of the property as an Ltd. company, AS Bindalsbruket, in which the family today holds only a shareholding.
Simone and Frithjof H. Plahte’s son, Frithjof Möinichen Plahte, and his wife, Linda Arlén Flåten Plahte, are the fifth generation now managing the Plahte Estate. They are the third generation to live at Terråk.
The business was handed over from father to son in 2004, and Frithjof Möinichen aims to manage and develop the estate with the same long-term perspective as generations before him. The sixth generation is represented by Asta Marie Plahte, born in 2001. Arlén Sofia Plahte was born in 2002, and Frithjof Erik Plahte was born in 2004.
In 1999, a renowned Norwegian author, Arvid Sveli, wrote a book about the history of Bindalsbruket and the Plahte Estate. The first part of the book describes conditions in Norway around 1600 that led the King to pay his war debts by granting his creditors large tracts of land in northern Norway. Parts of these areas were later split up and sold, for instance, to Jakhelln and Frithjof Plahte. Arvid Sveli tells the history of our family and also describes the rough way of life up north, the endurance of hard-working people, and their everyday lives. The book can be ordered through us, but is unfortunately available only in Norwegian.
The last 50 pages of the book are a journey through our estate describing the scenery, the hunting and fishing, and sharing stories about people who have lived here since the time of the Vikings. This part of the book has been made as an offprint and can be ordered through us. You can download the offprint, pictures, and all. (PDF format, 1,3 MB).
