My Favorite Place -

I really don't know what it is about this island of Ona in Norway or why this particular spot on the island tugs at me so much, but it is one of my favorite places in the world I think. Two separate islands connected by a small bridge are together referred to as Ona. This old cannery building is located on the southwest side of the larger island of Husøy and it has made it to my blogs before, back in March 2014 (see the link below), but I really want to post it again in case you missed it. This island of Ona has only 40 permanent inhabitants. It was once a thriving fishing community dependent on the abundant fishing grounds so long ago off the Norwegian coastline but now is only a ghost image of its former self. This side of the island is very desolate and requires about a thirty minute walk from the ferry landing. The ferry only arrives twice a day, morning and afternoon. The island is about 24 miles to the west out into the Atlantic from the mainland. The island also has millennial old remains of a Viking era burial ground from about 852 A.D.

This old cannery building has long since been abandoned and continues to show further neglect every time I visit. But it gives me comfort to look on this building while standing on the low tide bedrock surrounded by kelp and tide pools. It is so serene. So apparently permanent yet so obviously temporary. Free from the hustle of any kind of city life, this scene tells me of a place where people of the past depended on their livelihood. Resting on man-placed stone piers rising from bedrock that makes it feel like it could last a thousand years but with a wooden carcass of a building that has exceeded its eighty year life. What contradictions of longevity and the present surrounded by centuries of historic memories.

Ona Cannery