(Three years later, it was capped with a penthouse.) Its scale is similar to that of New York’s Flatiron Building, which, when completed in 1902, topped out at just over three hundred feet. Although Mjøstårnet dominates the Brumunddal skyline, it is a tenth the height of the world’s tallest structure, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai. It’s the third-tallest tower in Norway, a country whose buildings rarely extend above ten stories.

Mjøstårnet-the name means “Tower of Mjøsa”-stands at two hundred and eighty feet and consists of eighteen floors, combining office space, residential units, and a seventy-two-room hotel that has become a destination for visitors curious about the future of sustainable architecture and of novel achievements in structural engineering. Since 2019, however, Brumunddal has achieved a more welcome identity: as the site of Mjøstårnet, the tallest all-timber building in the world. The town, which has a population of eleven thousand, was until recently best known to Norwegians for a series of attacks on immigrant residents three decades ago, which led to street clashes between anti-racism protesters and supporters of the far right. Industrial buildings, mostly for the lumber industry, occupy the area closest to the lake, and the waterfront is cut off by a highway. There are no picturesque streets with cafés and boutiques, as there are in the ski resort of Lillehammer, some thirty miles to the north. Brumunddal, a small municipality on the northeastern shore of Lake Mjøsa, in Norway, has for most of its history had little to recommend it to the passing visitor.

Rough plank wild west new frontier