The 49-year-old Norwegian’s Nordic Choice Hotels earned him $1.2 billion last year, employing 10,000 people across Scandinavia and the title as owner of Scandinavia’s largest hotel chain.
But meet him in his underground garage in Oslo, Norway, or lounging on the deck of the Maltese Falcon, and he’s more likely to talk about the time he chained himself to the gates of a nuclear treatment plant in England in 2002. Or about the opening of his $200 million Clarion Hotel Post in the center of Gothenburg, Sweden, earlier this year.
Ten thousand Gothenburgers watched fireworks while Stordalen descended from the ceiling inside a 
giant disco ball—he wore a white jumpsuit and hardhat on the way down, playing drums with the energy of a caffeinated teenager.
Then there was his 2010 wedding to the now 33-year-old model-turned-physician Gunhild Melhus–tabloid fodder for weeks in Norway as much for the famous guests who flew to Marrakech for the event as for its $5 million price tag. Bob Geldof officiated. The bride wore Versace.
This is all standard operating procedure: He has been known to jump on stage during Prince concerts, ride flame-painted choppers through the lobby of his hotels, sport Italian labels as casually as Nike Swooshes.
“He is definitely the Norwegian who uses the most money on clothes,” says best friend Henrik Christensen, a corporate lawyer.
These days Stordalen is going for more of a green avenger look.
Credit Gunhild with the wardrobe change. (“She cleaned out my refrigerator, my hotels and my garage,” Stordalen says.) A devoted activist who sits on conservationist boards including the European Climate Foundation, GreeNudge and The Stordalen Foundation, she has prompted him to donate millions of dollars to eco groups worldwide. Last year the couple traveled with Al Gore on a climate research expedition to the Antarctic.
Gunhild describes their life together as one of technological optimism: “Both of us think there is no way we can save the world by asking people to stop living modern life. That’s why it’s so important to illustrate that you can still drive the most fun, most sexy cars and still have a modern life in a way that is sustainable.”
And they both know cars. Gunhild whips around Oslo in a red Tesla Roadster with her pet miniature pig, Pia Parma, in the passenger seat. He drives his German Sheppard, Qross, in a Ferrari FF modified to run on E85 biofuel. It’s the first of its kind to be so converted; Stordalen calls it his Ferrari Flexi-Fuel.
