Women Who Travel Podcast: The Magic of Island Life in Scandinavia

06.06.2024 - 16:57 / cntraveler.com

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There’s nothing quite like the magic of a Scandinavian summer, where daylight is near endless and hundreds of islands come to life for locals to explore and retreat to. Author—and repeat guest on this show—Dorthe Nors joins us to share stories of life on the Danish island of Fanø, fascinating folklore, and tips on creating your own island hopping journey this summer.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu and on today's episode of Women Who Travel, we begin a series on island life, spanning everywhere from Tahiti to Vancouver Island. But today I'm talking to one of our regulars, the Danish writer, Dorthe Nors, about magical islands in Denmark and Sweden. Everywhere from the rural and remote to ones with a downtown party scene.

Dorthe Nors: Denmark has 500 islands, which gives us a coastline that is bigger than most huge nations in the world. Living around the water and having these small islands is a very normal thing, having a summer cottage out there and going there. And in Denmark we have entirely small communities on islands. Our islands are a little bigger than some of these Swedish ones. So there are villages, there are communities, some of them are linked with bridges, but most of them you have to go by boat.

LA: Before we look at these islands and island culture generally, we'll zoom in on Fanø in Denmark's Wadden Sea. It's where Dorthe Nors spent a year living and writing.

DN: The Wadden Sea is an enigmatic ocean that goes from Holland to the south of Denmark and crosses the German border on its way. It's a big flat sea with a lot of tidal waves, and the water comes and goes during the day. It's a very quiet island and it's super enigmatic. Very, very big, broad white, flat beaches.

LA: UNESCO World Heritage rates this island as a unique and biodiverse treasure, shaped by the wind and the tides.

DN: You can walk like one kilometer into the ocean without seeing a breaker, and then it's pine trees and the most picturesque houses you can imagine. It looks like you're in a fairy tale. All the houses are of course protected by the state because they're so original, but it's super beautiful.

LA: How does being on that island sustain you both as a human and as a writer?

DN: When I lived there, it was the silence and then that they had this incredibly strong musical tradition there. They played music every night. They just took out the fiddle. You could visit somebody in the kitchen and suddenly there was a fiddle and people were playing and they were jamming. Music in that kind of silence, I mean, the island is so silent, and yet there is this music growing from it. It was