Baard Iversen

Who was Baard Iversen?

Baard Iversen was a Norwegian businessperson and politician.

Iversen was born in 1836 in Akerø. In 1854, at the age of eighteen he left home for the city Ålesund. Here, he began a career in trade. Also, he met the local girl Anna Johanne Georgine Junge, who he married. In 1862, he moved to the larger city Trondhjem to establish his own trade agency. He was awarded burghership the same year, and opened his first store B. Iversen. He moved the store to larger premises one year later, and expanded the field of business.

In 1868, Iversen's company entered the shipping business, investing in a freight boat route between Trondhjem and Frederikshald. Iversen later became a ship-owner, his first ship built in 1872 for traffic in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. In 1890 a route between Trondhjem and Newcastle was established. Iversen also campaigned for a decent railway connection between Trondhjem and the southern cities. From 1895 he was a member of the working committee of the proposed Dovre Line, which would connect Trondhjem to the capital Oslo via Lillehammer. It finally opened in 1921, one year after Iversen's death. Still, he was nicknamed "the father of the Dovre Line".