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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 always a contradiction to me, a very enigmatic one, which is also one of the reasons why I go back there all the time because of that strange silence and the things that it drew out of the people that lived there.
And I remember one of the things is that they had a saying on the island. If there was a husband who didn't treat his wife well, they would take him to the ferry. Send him over.
LA: That sounds like swimming with the fishes, like a mafia term. What are they doing when they're taking him to the ferry?
DN: Just put him on the ferry and then send him inland. Didn't want him on the island anymore.
LA: Oh my God, can we do this everywhere? Amazing.
DN: And there was a matriarchy on this island, which I'm also going to read a little bit about. But the interesting thing, during the time I stayed there, not a lot, but I saw some really creepy men there and nobody ever took them to the ferry. So I think it was also part of the history you told yourself, "We're strong women here. We are strong women. This is the culture of this island. We don't take... You can't do anything for us. We're just going to take you to the ferry." But in reality, they didn't.
There are three things they fear in that village, shipwrecks, storm surges and fire. The town of shipmasters is thatched. Each house except for a few lone contrarians is oriented east to west and thatched. So every Saturday at noon, the fire alarm went off. That way you knew it worked should all hell break loose. And then came the women. Since the siren was going off at 12 every Saturday anyway, they thought they might as well see it as a signal to summon the tribe. They slipped out of their gloriously painted shipmasters houses. They steered a course for the pub where a long table was set out for them.
The stocks of drought, beer, and white wine had been kicked up a notch. The coffee machine was switched on and the schnapps was laid out because there had to be booze-laced coffee too to keep everything going. And there they sat, the village women. They settled their broad backside around the table, becoming their own version of fire. Gossip set ablaze. A kind of matriarchy, yes. Historically speaking, a small community where women held power. When the people of Fanø bought their island from the king in the mid-eighteenth century, they also bought their freedom and the right to international sea trade.
Your husband is at sea most of the time. When he comes home, if he comes home, he gets you pregnant. On top of that, he must be occupied somehow. If he's busy painting the outside of the house, he won't be underfoot inside so you put him to work. "Why don't you paint stripes above the windows, my dear?" You say. It takes time and meanwhile everything carries on much as before, you're used to running things. You farm, keep animals. You, children, the other women and the old men help each other when he's away.
Sometimes you go, yes. Sometimes you join your husband, your brother, your father, and see the world. But back home it is you who decides when the hay should be harvested. This is how it was. They settled things for themselves. The women by and large. Decisions great and small, including those on behalf of the village, they took care of it all, which was fine. And she looked forward to him coming home, even though it was a hassle. His restlessness, the power struggles and uncertainty. Four or five such years can turn a spouse into a stranger near enough.
And again, he had to be off, gather, scatter, gather, scatter. If he did not come home, that too was dreadful. Then she was a widow in a village of many widows and unmarried women, but the widows and the spinsters moved in together. They took care of one another and the children. They drew an ingenious system of paths between the houses and the homes of the elderly with their feet. A cottage industry sprang up dealing in mutual care, preserved fruit, salted fish, gossip, social control and money. The sign of the famous matriarchy was their dress.
The jacket was buttoned up if you were unmarried. If you were married, a single button was left undone. The women's garb was roughly the same color as the house. So in principle, it was her he mended if he came home. And if he came home, they danced together. They danced one of the most beautiful traditional dances on earth, the [foreign language 00:07:45]. It really has to be seen, but this is how it goes. First they walk hand in hand, then he reaches both hands around her, behind her back.
Putting one of her arms behind her back, she grabs hold of him. The other arm she places lightly around his body. Then they whirl like scaled down dervishes across the floor. They have one another court in a centrifugal force. He clasps her firmly as though she were life itself. She allows it and looks determinedly, not coyly, at a slanting angle to the floor where he has a solid grip on her, the man, but he does not own her.
LA: Can you describe those dresses a little bit more?
DN: I can. They're very beautiful. There's a headpiece and you have to bind it in a way where there's a bow at the top that looks like a sail, so that you show that you are the wife of a sailor, of a boatman.
LA: It's very Viking.
DN: Yes, very Viking. And then they have a very tight... The upper part of it is very tight, and the skirt itself is bulging. It's really big. So you can see you have big hips, you have big... You can't be rocked, right? So it's quite beautiful.
LA: After the break, summer living on Scandinavian islands, swimming, biking parties and Viking sites. I spent a little bit of time last summer, I was in Stockholm and then I also was in Oslo and got a little taste of... I was there in June, so it was the long, long, long, long days, all the daylight and it really gave me a glimpse into how these places just burst with life as soon as the sun came out. I was doing a lot of the saunas and then I was jumping into the sea and this was June and it was bloody cold.
DN: It was cold, yes.
LA: It was very, very, very cold. It was a cold plunge. I did not stay in that water for very long. How much are people actually swimming or is it almost like a routine of health and wellbeing to be doing this kind of cold plunge and what are some of the other summer activities?
DN: But in the summer we don't think it's cold. It's because you are not from around here.
LA: It's because I'm weak. I'm frail.
DN: It's because you're weak. In the summer we think it's just lovely. It's fresh, it's salty, it's wonderful. And there's of course a big difference between bathing among cliffs like you did and doing from the sandy beaches where I live, but we don't think it's cold and not like that. We winter bathe from these places as well.
LA: That's true [inaudible 00:11:02] for you guys.
DN: It's just dipping and then getting out of there. And that's for health, which obviously is something that is very important in this whole region.
LA: How has Denmark and Sweden, I suppose, integrated these summers most into their culture? Particularly as you just noted, that all of these islands and communities have different ones.
DN: The summer in Scandinavia is very vibrant. They're almost holy or sacred. There are a lot of parties surrounding summer solstice, celebrating the longest night, doing all these things. The midsummer festivals, the Walpurgis festivals, everything to celebrate light and life. And it is very intense. They have this sort of bright highlight that is really special and then the sun never goes down. But an island in itself always turns its energy inwards. So cultures on islands are also bred during winter. It's bred from the population that is there and who are stuck there.
So they come up with all kinds of things to make daily life in this kind of isolation work. Also, I think when you're landlocked and you're part of a larger living on land inside the country, everything that you do just seeps into the neighborhood. It just runs out. It disappears. A literature festival in the middle of Denmark. You should really struggle to get people to go there because there are so many other things they could do. But when it's on an island, everybody goes.
LA: It sort of centers people.
DN: It centers people. It makes them pour all their energy into that one place, which makes island living enigmatic and also at times a bit claustrophobic.
LA: What are your favorite summer activities? How do you like to spend your island days?
DN: I like biking around on the island if I'm there, and read, sit, and also to check out the local culture. What is the psychology of that island, because that is super interesting. They form this kind of psychology with the help of the nature that they're in. So every island I go to has a special feel. A couple of years ago I went to an island between Sweden and Denmark called Anholt. And it has a long tradition of talking about that there are witches there, black magic and stuff like that. And it's strange, but just coming there, I felt uncomfortable.
I felt unsafe. There was something in how the woods were, how it mixed with the beaches, how people had built their houses. That was just like being in a fairy tale, a medieval fairy tale. And you could imagine that witches and strange stuff would happen there. So I'm not sure, I'm going to go back there again actually.
LA: I was going to say, I'm like, "I'd like to see it, but..."
DN: It was a little... I mean people love it, of course, but I felt uncomfortable there. So every island that you go to, pay attention, because there are cultures and the way they build houses, the way they communicate, what they believe in, what the kind of materialism they have, and check out their art. Check out how they live, how they party on the harbors, what they eat, what kind of thing is it that they want to eat. Every island has some kind of specialty that goes way back.
LA: Talk me through some of those specialties.
DN: It can be a specific way of preserving fish or pastry or it can be really strange stuff, but all islands have something, so check that out. Also, most of these islands have their own dances. I mean, on Fanø, they had a beautiful, beautiful dance. They danced centuries and just pay attention, just take it in because you can't find that on the mainland.
LA: So we've got specialty foods, we've got a ton of dancing, stays light very late. This is all leading towards parties,
DN: Bonfires.
LA: Bonfires. What are people drinking?
DN: They're drinking alcohol. This is Scandinavia. They are [inaudible 00:15:14]
LA: I know actually when I was in Scandinavia, I was getting... They were drinking me under the table and I was like, "I'm British. I can hold my own in these circumstances." But people really drink in Scandinavia.
DN: Yes, so they're drinking beer and white wine and cocktails and all kinds of stuff, and then they're just letting go. Winter is around the corner, so you better just charge all your batteries now.
LA: I guess charge all your batteries, but also kind of tire yourself out so you can sleep through winter.
DN: Yes. So you have the patience for the winter.
LA: I'm thinking about if you are a traveler and you're trying to experience some of these communities and these parties, and then also if you are moving to an island or you've just bought a cottage there, is it easy to ingratiate yourself into these communities or are they quite insular and closed?
DN: Well, the ones I've visited are quite open to newcomers because they have to. They can't escape them, right?
LA: I mean, they could drive them off.
DN: We could take them to the ferry.
LA: They could take them to the ferry if they misbehave. We did have another guest on this podcast last year who talked... She had moved to a very remote Scottish island, and she had really struggled to be kind of accepted by that island community because it was so tight-knit. Do you think it's in Scandinavian culture to be hosting and welcoming people in?
DN: Well, I would say during the summer, no problem, because there are a lot of tourists there, so just go have fun. Well, I stayed on this island during the winter, but there were other writers there and there were other artists, so I sort of got connected to that group of people. It can be very gossipy. I mean, some of the kids who grow up in these places just never want to leave, and some of them can't wait to get on the ferry and go somewhere where they can write their own life story without having everyone looking at it.
But in the summer, their arms are open. They live from this kind of island jumping and tourism and they love to show off their individuality.
LA: So there's a real pride. It sounds like.
DN: There's a lot of pride in this island living. Yes.
LA: Coming up, an enchanted island Faroe, where fans come to the home of Ingmar Bergman. It's incredibly remote and covered with wild strawberries, but it's only a ferry ride away from Sweden's most popular island. You are quite the expert on Ingmar Bergman, and he's set many of his films on or around these types of islands, right?
DN: Yes. He lived on a small island right north of the bigger island, Gotland, which is off the east coast of Sweden. And so it is very isolated. First you take the ferry to Gotland, which is big and beautiful, and then you ride up north, take another ferry to this little island north of the place called Faroe, which means Sheep's Island. He filmed some of his best films there, like Persona and a lot of other movies. I don't know the English titles from all of them, but he has had this house up there. And if I ever become a millionaire, I'm just going to copy that house.
It's so beautiful. And then he had a movie theater and everything up there and he lived quite isolated. I think he loved the solitude of the place and also he had nine children and they couldn't get him there, right? [inaudible 00:18:59]
LA: Sounds like he might've had to have been put on the ferry, but...
DN: I think he had been put on the ferry a couple of times actually. I think he had Liv Ullman shut up. I think she was trapped in one of his houses up there for a while, the poor woman. But that's a very special island. It's super raw, super dark in the winter. You are in the middle of nowhere, starry nights, but really rough. And the island in itself is made of limestone, which is sort of a light kind of stone, so it reflects the water and then there are only pine trees and water and it makes it look like you're on another planet almost.
In the summer, the light is so high, and I can imagine that he as a cinematographer arrived to go and just went, "Oh my God, I can just put up a camera here and it will work because everything is scenic and it looks like a dream landscape. And I can just put my character in here and let them work with these surroundings and this enigmatic nature. And it will just add a lot of good stuff to the film." These days, of course, the island itself is a shrine to his movies. There are a lot of almost-cult members who just love his movies and his work so much, that spend a lot of time there.
If you go to Faroe, you should go to the Bergman Centre, which is a museum of his movies. You can go to the lovely cafe, go get yourself a bike and then bike around on this island. And you should definitely go see these incredible limestone formations, pillars of limestone called raukar, which is a very phenomenal thing about that island. You see them often in his film as well. And his spirit is everywhere because you know that island from his movies. So it just lumps together with the landscape and also the drama and the isolation.
One of my absolute favorite films was also partly filmed there, and that is called Scenes from a Marriage. I absolutely love that film.
LA: Talk a little bit about Gotland, because from what I understand, it's one of the more popular ones among tourists. What are some of the draws there?
DN: It's big. I mean, you don't get too crowded with the other tourists, but then there's this one city, which is an old... [inaudible 00:21:32] city from medieval times. There's a city wall around it. It's super beautiful and full of cathedrals and lovely restaurants and strange little houses, and it's called Visby and it's definitely worth a visit. And then the rest of the island has this limestone quality to it, also hovering over the Baltic Sea in this strange white light and with these strange cliff formations and a lot of Viking history and a lot of medieval history. If you are into that.
LA: You said something right at the start of the episode that I've been thinking about throughout, which is how you need the ocean in your life. Even though you are now spending some of your time in a town or city, you still need the ocean. Why? What does it give you?
DN: It's part of me. The pulse is part of me. It's like being connected to life itself to me. I can't breathe without being close to water at times. Sometimes it's just enough knowing that it's there. I don't even have to go down to it. I just know it's there. It makes me calm and it gives me hope. Also, because I'm a traveling soul and in Scandinavia water is the same as traveling because we are a boat-faring nation. So looking at the ocean is going, "Oh, what's out there? What's on the other side of that horizon? What can I find? I have to go. I have to go."
So it's both the longing to see and understand other things. It's also being able to imagine things. And it's also... At times I think it's almost spiritual. That's where I connect to what is bigger than myself. I think I mentioned to someone that walking next to the ocean in the big dunes that we have here in this wild landscape is the one place where I feel like I'm on a planet in the universe. And it gives you a sense of awe to how big it all is and how small you are and how embraced you are by all that. And I don't know what that is. It just connects me.
LA: Dorthe, I think that is a beautiful note to wrap this episode on. Thank you so much for sharing all your island stories and transporting me to Scandinavia, your home of Denmark and its surrounding nations. Next week, Mumtaz Mustafa and Laura Klynstra make a cookbook they call a love letter to their cultures. It's a beautiful selection of Pakistani and Dutch food, as well as recipes from their extensive travels. I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah.
Our engineers are Jake Lummus and James Yost. The show's mixed by Ammar Lal. Jude Kampfner from Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast Head of Global Audio. See you next week.