Alnes

Alnes

On the island of Godøya, in the muncipality of Giske in Møre og Romsdal county, Norway, lies the romantically quiet township of Alnes. Established sometime around the 13th century, the town had a population of a mere 203 in 2013 but was once a fishing village thriving on the fish rich sea banks of western Norway on the Atlantic Ocean. A stone church located on an nearby island in Giske has been dated to the year 1207 A.D.

Alnes is reached through a  1.5 kilometer long tunnel located under a 1500 ft. high granite mountain that is in essence the island of Godøya. The town lies on a flat land mass projecting westward toward the Atlantic from the base of the mountain. At the western most point of this flat land portion sits the Alnes Lighthouse, built in 1852. 

This photo was taken standing on the rock breakwater of Alnes harbor which protects fishing boats and private vessels from the winter storms raging in from the Atlantic. Looking east from this breakwater toward the base of the granite mountain, these boat houses lie along the shoreline adjacent to the county road and also serve as vacation rentals. The remainder of the township is to my back in this photo. As is often the case along western Norway, even in the summer, a drizzly fog loomed all around me. Despite the gray overcast, the colorful new boathouses of red, yellow and white stood out as a reminder that Norwegians still find this quiet, almost inaccessible, little town a desirable place to live and vacation.