The whaling stations of Ronas Voe

For three decades from 1903 Norwegian-owned whaling companies ran two stations on the deep sheltered Ronas Voe — one at Olna and one at Collafirth. Steam catchers brought fin and blue whales in from the Atlantic to be flensed, boiled and rendered into oil. Local men were hired as labourers; the smell, said an old account, "carried for three miles before the wind". The stations closed in 1929 when the whaling moved south to Antarctica. The remains of the slipways and oil tanks are still visible on both sides of the voe.