Thor Bjørklund (30 October 1889 – 8 December 1975) was a Norwegian

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

and businessman. He is best known as the

of ''Ostehøvel'', a popular cheese slicer which developed into an important Norwegian export product. Thor Bjørklund was born in

Lillehammer Lillehammer () is a municipality in Innlandet county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Gudbrandsdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Lillehammer. Some of the more notable villages in the munici ...

Oppland Oppland is a former county in Norway which existed from 1781 until its dissolution on 1 January 2020. The old Oppland county bordered the counties of Trøndelag, Møre og Romsdal, Sogn og Fjordane, Buskerud, Akershus, Oslo and Hedmark. The ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. He was apprenticed as a cabinet maker. He also attended the Arts and Crafts School in

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

. He was employed for some time as a master

carpenter Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenter ...

. He began to experiment with a carpenter's plane in the hope that he could create something similar for use in the kitchen. He made cheese slicers in his workshop, and on 27 February 1925 he patented the model of cheese slicer which is today found in many households in

Nordic countries The Nordic countries (also known as the Nordics or ''Norden''; ) are a geographical and cultural region in Northern Europe, as well as the Arctic Ocean, Arctic and Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic oceans. It includes the sovereign states of Denm ...

. and also particularly in

the Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. In 1927, he started the firm known today as Thor Bjørklund & Sønner AS. The company still produces cheese slicers in

, and has operated since 17 November 2009 as a subsidiary of Gudbrandsdal Industrier AS.

References

External links

Thor Bjørklund & Sønner AS websiteGudbrandsdal Industrier AS website
1889 births 1975 deaths People from Lillehammer Norwegian company founders Norwegian business executives 20th-century Norwegian inventors {{Norway-engineer-stub