Jennestad Handelssted, Langøya

Jennestad is a place in Sortland municipality in Nordland. The place is located on Langøya, approx. 10 km from Sortland along highway 820.

At the local dialect, Jennestad is pronounced "Je Nnsta". The origin of the name is very uncertain. It is possible that the -stad part of the name is really derived from -stø. The first part of the name is even more uncertain. In Sortland village book-farm and family, part 2, historian Johan Borgos writes that the name Jennestad can mean "Støplassen you go to", the same meaning as Gjengstø in Sør-Trøndelag.

Jennestad was previously an active trading site with land trade, ship expedition and post opening. The trading site was established before 1830. Ødbert Johansen came from Dønna at Helgeland and bought the site in the 1890s. He built and developed the trading site, and his son Einar Aagaard drove the place until he died in the early 1980s. But today the store and post office have long since been closed. The post office was closed on October 1, 1992, and the local shop was closed down a few years later. Jennestad Handelssted is now a museum and is kept open to tourists in the summer. Jennestad Hovedgård is today a gallery, and is also used for concerts in the summer.

The Jennestad archive was an archive consisting of over 100,000 letters gathered by merchant Ødbert Johansen and his descendants.

Jennestad has a primary school and kindergarten. When the school at Nevernes was closed around 1990, the few students were transferred to the school at Jennestad.

Jennestad has a significant occurrence of graphite. The graphite was extracted between 1901 and 1914. There was also trial operation on the incidence in the 1950s, and several studies in both the 1970s and 1990s.

At the end of the 1990s, a trot track was built on Jennestad, but the trot track has been little in use.

In 1979, Sortland orienteering team made an o-map of Jennestadmarka. This map has been revised several times and expanded all the way to Frøskeland and Holmstad. In 1993, Sortland O-team organized the junior NM in this area.

In the area there is Jennestad community center.

Jennestad is among the places in Vesterålen where short -nobbed geese graze during the draw in the spring. During the goose cover, large flocks of geese can be seen on the grasslands and marshes around Jennestad. The farmers in the area believe they are losing money on goose grazing, and in recent years the geese have often been chased away from the field.