The choice of Jordal had the drawback of poor ground conditions and that the site was a hill. This was overcome by the architects Frode Rinnan and Olav Tveten by building the venue into the hill as an amphitheater, hence the name, along with a stage at the low end. Construction was budgeted to cost 2 million Norwegian krone (NOK), but construction cost NOK 4 million. The overruns were largely caused by difficult ground conditions and the hillside location, with a more conventional location estimated to have halved the construction costs. Half a million krone were also spent because the venue used a year to receive a building permit, so the bulk of construction could not start until early 1951, a year after schedule, although preliminary construction started in August 1950. Jordal contributed to more than half the total cost overruns for the 1952 Winter Olympic venues.