Tour guide used to summer at Vikingsholm

When you're talking with your guide at Vikingsholm, the Lake Tahoe Scandinavian mansion that's one of the most popular lake attractions, ask her what life was like at the secluded manor 70 years ago. She was there.

Helen Henry Smith, 77, of Palo Alto spent summers during the 1930s at Vikingsholm, the Emerald Bay home of Lora J. Knight, a wealthy widow who built in the Nordic style because the setting reminded her of a fjord. This year, Smith's 40th working at Vikingsholm, she received the California State Park Rangers Association Honorary Ranger Award for her service as a tour guide and for establishing a nonprofit foundation that has raised more than $2 million for restoration of the landmark.

"Helen's work shows how one person can really make a difference," says California Parks Ranger Heidi Doyle, who nominated Smith for the award. "She has taken her childhood memories and turned them into a legacy for future generations."

Last month, Smith, who holds a doctorate in education from Stanford, was also honored for her fundraising efforts by the California State Parks Foundation at the premiere of a video presentation now shown to visitors of the home: "Vikingsholm: The Legacy of Lora Knight and Helen Smith."

"People love to visit this home," Smith says. "In four months' time we had 40,000 people visit Vikingsholm."

The Nordic mansion sits among the conifers near the shore at the end of Emerald Bay. The parking lot off Highway 89 requires an easy 1-mile walk down the switchbacks of a dirt road. The home is also accessible by private boat. Built for $125,000 in 1929 and virtually completed in one summer by 200 workers, Vikingsholm features building materials from the Tahoe area. The stone and wood structure, with a turret that gives it the appearance of a castle, was Knight's summer home. According to Smith, Knight purchased 239 acres around Emerald Bay for $250,000.

Smith, who conducts most of the tours herself, shows visitors the dragon-shaped ceiling beams in the living room, the original Swedish and Norwegian furnishings, and the plumbing and electrical facilities that were advanced for the time period. Finnish carpenters carved the exterior wood features, and Knight visited Scandinavia to buy antiques for Vikingsholm. The home is arranged around a central courtyard and features a sod roof on some of the single-story portions of the home. Tours do not include a visit to tiny Fannette Island, home of Knight's stone teahouse, which is now in ruins.

Smith's tours are filled with personal touches that only someone who lived at Emerald Bay could recount: "Mrs. Knight pronounced it 'Veekingsholm.' In one of the Scandinavian languages it means a bay with an island. On warm days we'd take small boats to the island and mess around. It was never dull."

Vikingsholm: The parking lot is on the left 19 miles south of Tahoe City on Highway 89. A relatively steep 1-mile path leads down the hill to the visitors' center. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily through September. Parking $7. Admission: $5 adults, $3 children (younger than 6 free). (530) 525-9530, www.vikingsholm.org.

Mark S. Bacon is a freelance writer. E-mail him at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page Q - 39 of the San Francisco Chronicle