Ove Joensen was a Faroese seaman and adventurer.

Ove Joensen was living on the Island of Nólsoy

Nólsoy

Nólsoy is an island and village in central Faroe Islands, located to the east of the capital Tórshavn in Streymoy. There is only one settlement on the island: Nólsoy on the north-west coast on Stongin, a peninsula attached to the rest of the island by a metres-wide isthmus...

, where he built his Faroe boat Diana Victoria, to row the 900 nautical miles (1,666.8 km) from the Faroes to Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 in Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

. After two unsuccessful tries in 1984 and 1985, where he reached the Shetland Islands

Shetland Islands

Shetland is a subarctic archipelago of Scotland that lies north and east of mainland Great Britain. The islands lie some to the northeast of Orkney and southeast of the Faroe Islands and form part of the division between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. The total...

, he succeeded in 1986, when he arrived in Copenhagen on 11 August 1986 after 41 days rowing alone. Thousands of people were greeting him in the Danish capital. The Danes called him Ro-Ove (Row-Ove).

In 1987 Ove drowned in Skálafjørður

Skálafjørður

Skálafjørður, also known as Kongshavn is a fjord in Eysturoy. It is the largest fjord in the Faroe Islands...

-inlet where he fell over board. The civic festival Ovastevna is held each August on Nólsoy to commemorate Ove Joensen. His boat Diana Victoria can also be seen in Nólsoy, it is inside a boat house / old storage house, which is now a café and Tourist Information Centre in summertime, the boat house is located down in the harbour, near the ferry port. There is a monument to him situated by the harbour, next to the whale bones that form an ornamental entrance to the village, just opposite of the Tourist Information Centre. Ove Joensen is buried in Nólsoy in the cemetery south of the village.

Literature

• Kirstin Didriksen, Ragnhild Joensen: Ove, Egið forlag, 1989 ISBN 87-982956-3-2