BUILDING INTEGRITY SINCE 1890 the Remarkable History of Sundt Construction
BUILDING INTEGRITY SINCE 1890 The Remarkable History of Sundt Construction SUNDT CONSTRUCTION, INC. / 800.280.3000 / SUNDT.COM Chapter One From Small Beginnings Mauritz MAURITZ MARTINSEN SUNDT, founder of the company that bears his name, was Martinsen Sundt born in Gjovik, Norway, on October 3, 1863, and grew up on the family farm near Eina, which is south of Gjovik. Th e farm is on a point of land on the east coast of Lake Mjosa, about 70 miles due north of the capitol city of Oslo, and has been in the Sundt family for 400 years. Lake Mjosa is Norway’s largest lake and is extremely deep, one of the deepest lakes in all of Europe. From Farmer to Ship’s Carpenter Norway has always been a hard place to earn a living off the land because less than fi ve percent of the entire country is arable. Th e rest is mountains covered with snow, ice and rocks. Nothing has been written about the Sundt farm’s crops but it likely was a subsistence farm, meaning everything the family raised was consumed by the family and livestock. What is known, though, is that M.M. Sundt left home very early in life. It was about 1877, when he was 12 or 13, that he left home to join the Norwegian Merchant Marine. He apparently sailed fi rst as a cabin boy, but he was ambitious and within a short time was appointed ship’s carpenter when the ship’s regular carpenter died. For the next four years he sailed aboard windjammers on the North and Baltic Seas, transporting freight between England and Leningrad and ports between.
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