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Una linea nel mondo: un anno sul Mare del Nord
Da Skagen, l’estremo nord della Danimarca, a Den Helder, nei Paesi Bassi: è la linea di costa che Dorthe Nors chiama casa. Un paesaggio di dune e pinete, perennemente scolpito dai capricci degli inquieti Mare del Nord e Mare dei Wadden, in costante movimento. Come la scrittrice, divisa tra una vita di viaggi e il richiamo dei luoghi dell’infanzia, perché «ogni identità nasce da una scissione». Nel corso di un anno, Nors torna a visitare la sua linea: vagando su strade e sentieri, si ferma ad Amsterdam, dove i canali addomesticano il caos delle maree, e va in cerca dell’abbazia di Børglum, cupo edificio che a volte magicamente scompare; vive per mesi a Fanø, tra le Frisone settentrionali, abitata da una fiera comunità matriarcale, e va in macchina fino a Thy, un tempo depressa comunità di pescatori, oggi paradiso di surfisti e uccelli migratori detto «Cold Hawaii». Tutti luoghi in cui la cocciutaggine degli abitanti, temprati dagli elementi, si è scontrata con l’entusiasmo dei forestieri. Ma quando il turismo e l’innovazione rompono antichi equilibri, diventano pericolosi: villaggi che d’estate sembrano parchi divertimento in inverno si svuotano, mentre le fabbriche vicine alla costa scaricano scorie in mare. C’è però chi si oppone, come per decenni ha fatto Aage Hansen, pescatore del Limfjord che negli anni Settanta incolpò uno stabilimento chimico della moria di pesci della zona, guadagnandosi prima l’ostracismo dei compaesani, poi un cavalierato. E come Dorthe Nors, che tenta di fondersi con il paesaggio e, unendo sapere scientifico a intuizione poetica, l’ironia della cittadina all’affetto di chi tra i fiordi è cresciuto, racconta l’eterna legge del cambiamento.
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 7, 2021
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2767 people want to read
About the author
Dorthe Nors
38 books253 followersDorthe Nors is a Danish author and writer. She is the first Danish author to be published in the American magazine The New Yorker. She was born in 1970 and studied literature and art history at the University of Aarhus. After publishing three novels, she wrote Karate Chop, her collection of short stories, in 2008 and Minna Needs Rehearsal Space in 2013. She has seen her short stories in various publications, including The Boston Review, Harpers and The New Yorker, and has contributed to anthologies in Denmark and Germany. Having international acclaim, she lives in rural Jutland, Denmark.
From http://pushkinpress.com/author/dorthe...
From http://pushkinpress.com/author/dorthe...
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December 8, 2023
“I know other people’s stories are out there in their thousands, but this is my encounter with the place where the light comes ashore, where the sea meets the beach, whips up, calms, sits up at the table like a creative child, puts greaseproof paper over the map and finds a pencil. The land, now, is engulfed in fog. But I draw a single stroke by following the line I can make out. So there it is, itself, and I shall meet it. See, look – it’s moving, the line. It’s dancing like a dervish.”
Danish writer Dorthe Nors has put together an astonishing book that is part memoir and part travelogue. But to call it those two things alone would do her and this work a huge disservice. Once again, I find myself in debt to the impeccable reading tastes of Goodreads friends for pointing me towards these lesser known gems (thank you, Justin, for this one). What I found at its heart was a deeply reflective work on our relationships with nature and with one another, as well as a personal reckoning of our memories and our greatest desires. The “line” to which she refers in the quote above is the coastline stretching from the northern tip of Denmark in the North Sea down the western coast into the Frisian Islands on the Wadden Sea. The stunning prose demonstrates that this “line” is much more than ink on paper on a map; it’s a place alive with people and history and the ever present and changing forces of the natural world.
“Civilization is a snapshot. Forces such as the sea’s, the wind’s, the rain’s, the ungraspability of the universe, to say nothing of the Earth’s glowing core, compared to your reality, strung frail and taut between birth and death? Your concepts of space? The universe would laugh if it knew that you existed and could hear your little joke.”
In a series of essays, we learn a lot about how geography and environmental forces have affected the people that have lived in this corner of the world at different points in history. Vikings, floods, the fishing industry, surfer culture, war, an agrochemical plant, and the patterns of migratory birds are among the topics Nors relays to us in the fashion of a natural storyteller, rather than simply a disseminator of facts. She also contemplates the man-made quality of borders and how they shift and are meant to be crossed and explored. The sea and the wind don’t give a damn about borders. Weaved throughout these tidbits of knowledge are her own memories of childhood and her path towards a writer’s life. Paying a visit back to her homeland has its own challenges in addition to the rewards. As a woman that sought a different path, a way of life not common to the inhabitants of the “line”, she was sometimes viewed as an outsider. Yet she squarely claims her heritage, her family, and her birth right here.
“I don’t belong here, according to the locals, but I have roots here. Strong roots. They run through my senses, my family, our history, and they reach my love of the Limfjord and the North Sea. They run down through the sand, the marine clay, to the groundwater and the ochre.”
One aspect of Nors’ life that truly resonated with me was the relationship with her mother. This was so respectfully and lovingly shared. Not because it reminded me of my relationship with my own mother, no. Rather, it struck a chord when thinking about my bond with my young adult daughter. Mothers will fiercely protect their daughters. They will sacrifice for them. Mothers also have their own dreams and greatest hopes, some to be realized and others to be lost like a bird’s cry in the wind. Nors recognized this about her mother. Not all children, even the grown ones, have the perspicacity to do so. I love this about Dorthe Nors.
“I thought of my mother, walking around Skagen Museum and dreaming of a studio with north-facing windows… She walked here dreaming of a life of grapes on pale dishes and Dad’s hunting dog at her feet. But in reality, that dog ate our shoes… my mum dreamt of a life of contemplative beauty under a grand sky, with rose bushes in the garden, on her own terms…”
This book is beautifully composed and thoughtfully shared. Nors is not without her fair share of humor either. It’s not the sort of book you’d point someone towards if he or she seeks simply a textbook description of the landscape or the history of a place. This is a piece for deeply reflective readers who have a love affair with both nature and the written word. Indeed, it’s for those of us that have a sense of wanderlust, a reverence for solitude, and a desire for true intimacy with our kindred spirits.
“I longed to be in the nacelle during a raging storm. To be drawn into its power, enveloped by it, lifted, carried, shattered. To be a Viking or a small animal in the North Sea between Blavand and Harwich. To live my brief and arbitrary life while I still have it.”
Danish writer Dorthe Nors has put together an astonishing book that is part memoir and part travelogue. But to call it those two things alone would do her and this work a huge disservice. Once again, I find myself in debt to the impeccable reading tastes of Goodreads friends for pointing me towards these lesser known gems (thank you, Justin, for this one). What I found at its heart was a deeply reflective work on our relationships with nature and with one another, as well as a personal reckoning of our memories and our greatest desires. The “line” to which she refers in the quote above is the coastline stretching from the northern tip of Denmark in the North Sea down the western coast into the Frisian Islands on the Wadden Sea. The stunning prose demonstrates that this “line” is much more than ink on paper on a map; it’s a place alive with people and history and the ever present and changing forces of the natural world.
“Civilization is a snapshot. Forces such as the sea’s, the wind’s, the rain’s, the ungraspability of the universe, to say nothing of the Earth’s glowing core, compared to your reality, strung frail and taut between birth and death? Your concepts of space? The universe would laugh if it knew that you existed and could hear your little joke.”
In a series of essays, we learn a lot about how geography and environmental forces have affected the people that have lived in this corner of the world at different points in history. Vikings, floods, the fishing industry, surfer culture, war, an agrochemical plant, and the patterns of migratory birds are among the topics Nors relays to us in the fashion of a natural storyteller, rather than simply a disseminator of facts. She also contemplates the man-made quality of borders and how they shift and are meant to be crossed and explored. The sea and the wind don’t give a damn about borders. Weaved throughout these tidbits of knowledge are her own memories of childhood and her path towards a writer’s life. Paying a visit back to her homeland has its own challenges in addition to the rewards. As a woman that sought a different path, a way of life not common to the inhabitants of the “line”, she was sometimes viewed as an outsider. Yet she squarely claims her heritage, her family, and her birth right here.
“I don’t belong here, according to the locals, but I have roots here. Strong roots. They run through my senses, my family, our history, and they reach my love of the Limfjord and the North Sea. They run down through the sand, the marine clay, to the groundwater and the ochre.”
One aspect of Nors’ life that truly resonated with me was the relationship with her mother. This was so respectfully and lovingly shared. Not because it reminded me of my relationship with my own mother, no. Rather, it struck a chord when thinking about my bond with my young adult daughter. Mothers will fiercely protect their daughters. They will sacrifice for them. Mothers also have their own dreams and greatest hopes, some to be realized and others to be lost like a bird’s cry in the wind. Nors recognized this about her mother. Not all children, even the grown ones, have the perspicacity to do so. I love this about Dorthe Nors.
“I thought of my mother, walking around Skagen Museum and dreaming of a studio with north-facing windows… She walked here dreaming of a life of grapes on pale dishes and Dad’s hunting dog at her feet. But in reality, that dog ate our shoes… my mum dreamt of a life of contemplative beauty under a grand sky, with rose bushes in the garden, on her own terms…”
This book is beautifully composed and thoughtfully shared. Nors is not without her fair share of humor either. It’s not the sort of book you’d point someone towards if he or she seeks simply a textbook description of the landscape or the history of a place. This is a piece for deeply reflective readers who have a love affair with both nature and the written word. Indeed, it’s for those of us that have a sense of wanderlust, a reverence for solitude, and a desire for true intimacy with our kindred spirits.
“I longed to be in the nacelle during a raging storm. To be drawn into its power, enveloped by it, lifted, carried, shattered. To be a Viking or a small animal in the North Sea between Blavand and Harwich. To live my brief and arbitrary life while I still have it.”
January 7, 2024
‘The paths through the landscape are a feat of memory that we create with the landscape and with the other people who have walked and are walking through it.’
Memory is a strange thing. It comes to us in bits and pieces, recollections and musings brought on through places and sounds and scents. Landscapes and memory are irrevocably intertwined in Dorthe Nors’ A Line in the World - a year of trips up and down the North Sea coastline of the Jutland peninsula, and a lifetime of trips down the memory lane — personal and collective, that of childhood and that of generations past.
‘The landscape is an archive of memory.’
It’s not quite a travelogue and not quite a memoir. Those are the inspirations, yes, but the collection of the quietly reflective essays here is that whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts. There’s also history and geography, birds and lighthouses, shipwrecks and wars, Vikings and fishermen, and the variety of relationship between people and nature and all combinations thereof, and even surfers of the “Cold Hawaii”. And it’s all told in an understatedly confident narration that keeps you spellbound and immersed to the point where you can actually see and feel what Nors describes as though you’re living it.
“This eternal, fertile and dread-laden stream inside us. This fundamental question: do you want to remember or forget? Either way, something will grow. A path, a scar in the mind, a sorrow that you cannot grasp, because it belongs to someone else. All that must be carried alone. All that cannot be told. Your story emerges in flashes, or as ripples on the surface, before diving down again. Your memories want you and do not want you. Your story is the one you share with others and the one you must live with, in yourself, and no matter what, you are led along. You are moved, transported, forced to wander down all these tracks, into the light, into the dark, into nothing.”
I’m spoiled. When I think of the ocean I see my happy place — friendly waves, long beach strolls, water you can cautiously touch with your bare toes even in winter, and breathtaking sunsets as the sun dips into the distant blue-gray.
But that’s far from the ragged line of the North Sea coast that Dorthe Nors shows us here. It’s the place that can be powerful and merciless, shaping its inhabitants over generations into both resilience and resignation. It’s the place that is full of desolate rugged beauty and yet can be ruthless and unforgiving at a whim. The storms are always waiting.
It’s a place that shapes your soul and pulls at it when you’re away. But as we know, “You carry the place you come from inside you, but you can never go back to it.”
“I shut my eyes, as I said, and then it came: I want a storm surge, I thought. I want a north-west wind, fierce and hard. I want trees so battered and beaten they’re crawling over the ground. I want beach grass, lyme grass, crowberry stalks and heather that prick my calves until they bleed, and salt crystallizing on my skin. I want vast expanses, wasteland, wind-blasted stone, mountainous dunes and a body language I understand. I want to wake beneath a sky that is grey and miserable, but which creates a space of colossal dimensions in a second, when the light comes ashore. A horizon is what I want, and I want solitude. Healthy solitude, and I want intimacy, true intimacy. I no longer want to be anyone but myself.”
Wonderful and beautiful. Thanks to Justin, Candi and Barbara whose wonderful reviews made me step out of my usual reading comfort zone and pick up this little quiet gem.
4.5 stars.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
Read
December 13, 2024This is a walking journal in which the author sets out in space but goes back in time.
Dorthe Nors was born in a small village on the west coast of Denmark, far from the urban centres on the eastern side of the country. She has spent much of her adult life in those eastern cities but now she has chosen to live for a year in the western regions she hails from.
In a series of chapters with dreamy names that could double as song titles, eg, The Shortest Night, West by Water, Wadden Sea Suite, Quiet Rain in Skagen, she takes us along the shores she knows well, noticing the way the dunes and lagoons have changed as the sea has invaded here, deposited sand there, but also noticing what people have built to control the action of the sea, the dykes, the causeways, the land bridges, the dams, all the stitches they've sown to halt the shifts and surges of the powerful North Sea tides.
But her book is not just a diary of what she sees on her coastal ramblings during the course of one year. While she's walking, she's thinking, thinking about her family, eg, her father who taught her the names of birds and shellfish and many other things. Yes, this is a very personal memoir as well as a book about the broken line in the world that is the Danish west coast. Speaking of the little hamlet she lived in as a child, Dorthe Nors says:
"That parish is the only place on earth where I know all the shortcuts, all the paths, and I know who lived in which house and whose children were whose. I know all the family names on the gravestones and when I come to die, that is where you should bury me."
There are other moving passages about friends from various places along that coast, people who helped to make her the person she is today, a person always and ever from the west coast of Denmark. It is as if there were a line down the map of Denmark like a great divide and her identity is tied to being on the left side of that line, the rural side, the less developed side, the fragmented side, the one that's always in flux, being shaped and reshaped by the fierce North Sea.
But because of that flux, it's impossible for Dorthe Nors to find perfect traces of her past. Her childhood home is gone, and even if it weren't, she realises that although her identity is tied to the west coast places she loves so much, she herself is no longer the person she was when she lived in them. She cannot erase completely the fact that she crossed the divide and lived many years in the urban east.
The short essay-like chapters in this memoir are her efforts to reconnect with West Denmark and with her past. As she realises, newly arrived from the east, "there is the coastline far below me. I'm standing on it in this house on the central west coast, while simultaneously looking down upon it in map form on my desk. I have lifted myself above it for a moment, but for the next year, I will sink myself into it, I shall let it draw me wherever it pleases. I will not let my movements be dictated by the fixed conventions of reading a map: north to south, west to east. I will look at it as a line and dive into it the way one dives into text."
I dived into her text so deeply, I wanted to live in her childhood place. I wanted to see with my own eyes everything she saw. But I can't.
However, the combination of reading Dorthe Nors' text right after finishing a memoir by Jakuta Alikavazovic in which she also revisited a childhood location associated with her father, prompted me to take a mental look at a little stretch of the western coastline of my home country, a place my identity is very much tied to although I've lived in many other places since.
I’m going to walk a little of that coastline now. You can come with me if you like, see what I see, feel what I feel. And if I tell you things you can’t believe—such as me walking on water—feel free to turn back.
I always doubted that episode in Jesus’s story, by the way, I used to think he was just walking in the silt-filled shallows. Or that there were stones under the surface of the water that he stepped on just as I’m doing now. Yes, I’m a little way out from the water's edge, finding a few stones just perfectly placed to step on and still keep my boots dry.
I remember a row of similar stones from years ago and the fun it was when the tide was just at the right point so that I could walk from one to another quite safely. The way I remember it, you could do that for quite a long stretch but there seem to be less of them now. The entire shoreline feels different, but that's understandable. A lot of time has passed since I last walked here. The steps down to the shore have more or less collapsed. They used to sit even and steady, as dependable as my father who was often with me on this shoreline walk.
If anyone could have walked on water, it was he—or that was how my child's mind saw him. Solid as a rock but light as a feather. Light as in agile, able to spring over a fence or cross a ditch with one easy stride, and always remembering to pause and hold out a hand to the child who was following him.
And now I've come to a fence I don't remember, a line stitched down the shore and reaching out into the sea like a great divide between this side and beyond. It doesn't seem new; it's covered in tangles of seaweed and scraps of plastic, proof of the many tides that have washed over it since it was laid down, and further proof if I needed it that it's been a long time since I walked this way.
I feel reluctant to cross it. I don't know if I even can. I think I'll turn back and abandon this effort to retrace a childhood walk with my father.
But he would not have let such a fence block his path, would he?
As if he's beckoning me to follow him, I hoist myself over it, and drop to the other side. Not so difficult after all.
Ah, here are the oystercatchers that used to colonize this shore, their cries sharp as my memory of them. And I see now the long line of stones at the water's edge that are exactly as they used to be. So they were further along the shore and not where I first thought? And they are cleaner here too, with no traces of the greeny scum I noticed at the water's edge earlier. In fact the whole shore looks healthier, smells saltier, and there are millions of limpets and mussels attached to the rocks. There are seals bobbing their heads far out in the waves just like they used to do. My father would point them out with his twenty-twenty vision, and I would squint to see them, short-sighted even then.
And here's an oyster. If he were with me, my father would pull out his penknife, scrape the edges off the shell, and with one neat flick, he'd cleave it apart. Then he'd hand me the pearly plate with its plump morsel, and I'd swallow it down in one easy gulp like a young bird.
I put the unopened oyster in my pocket and continue walking.
On a rock a little way out, I spot the silhouette of a cormorant, its wings spread to dry in the sun. My father called those birds 'black hags', and they do look grim, almost portentous, as they stand perfectly still, their gaze trained as if onto a different time.
I find another oyster and add it to my collection. I step more carefully now in case there are more. In the sandy silt between the stones, I see the trace of a footstep, the double bars from the cleat of a boot perhaps. Someone has walked this way since the tide dropped. I hurry on, looking down for more traces, looking up to squint at the distance.
Then I see a silhouette, hovering dark against the light. Yes, there is someone ahead of me, standing like a rock in the shallows, looking towards me, as if beckoning. In the long moment of my realization, clear and sharp as the cry of an oystercatcher, everything else seems to disappear, the sounds, the smells, the stones beneath my feet.
I step onto the water and hold my hand out to my father.
Dorthe Nors was born in a small village on the west coast of Denmark, far from the urban centres on the eastern side of the country. She has spent much of her adult life in those eastern cities but now she has chosen to live for a year in the western regions she hails from.
In a series of chapters with dreamy names that could double as song titles, eg, The Shortest Night, West by Water, Wadden Sea Suite, Quiet Rain in Skagen, she takes us along the shores she knows well, noticing the way the dunes and lagoons have changed as the sea has invaded here, deposited sand there, but also noticing what people have built to control the action of the sea, the dykes, the causeways, the land bridges, the dams, all the stitches they've sown to halt the shifts and surges of the powerful North Sea tides.
But her book is not just a diary of what she sees on her coastal ramblings during the course of one year. While she's walking, she's thinking, thinking about her family, eg, her father who taught her the names of birds and shellfish and many other things. Yes, this is a very personal memoir as well as a book about the broken line in the world that is the Danish west coast. Speaking of the little hamlet she lived in as a child, Dorthe Nors says:
"That parish is the only place on earth where I know all the shortcuts, all the paths, and I know who lived in which house and whose children were whose. I know all the family names on the gravestones and when I come to die, that is where you should bury me."
There are other moving passages about friends from various places along that coast, people who helped to make her the person she is today, a person always and ever from the west coast of Denmark. It is as if there were a line down the map of Denmark like a great divide and her identity is tied to being on the left side of that line, the rural side, the less developed side, the fragmented side, the one that's always in flux, being shaped and reshaped by the fierce North Sea.
But because of that flux, it's impossible for Dorthe Nors to find perfect traces of her past. Her childhood home is gone, and even if it weren't, she realises that although her identity is tied to the west coast places she loves so much, she herself is no longer the person she was when she lived in them. She cannot erase completely the fact that she crossed the divide and lived many years in the urban east.
The short essay-like chapters in this memoir are her efforts to reconnect with West Denmark and with her past. As she realises, newly arrived from the east, "there is the coastline far below me. I'm standing on it in this house on the central west coast, while simultaneously looking down upon it in map form on my desk. I have lifted myself above it for a moment, but for the next year, I will sink myself into it, I shall let it draw me wherever it pleases. I will not let my movements be dictated by the fixed conventions of reading a map: north to south, west to east. I will look at it as a line and dive into it the way one dives into text."
I dived into her text so deeply, I wanted to live in her childhood place. I wanted to see with my own eyes everything she saw. But I can't.
However, the combination of reading Dorthe Nors' text right after finishing a memoir by Jakuta Alikavazovic in which she also revisited a childhood location associated with her father, prompted me to take a mental look at a little stretch of the western coastline of my home country, a place my identity is very much tied to although I've lived in many other places since.
I’m going to walk a little of that coastline now. You can come with me if you like, see what I see, feel what I feel. And if I tell you things you can’t believe—such as me walking on water—feel free to turn back.
I always doubted that episode in Jesus’s story, by the way, I used to think he was just walking in the silt-filled shallows. Or that there were stones under the surface of the water that he stepped on just as I’m doing now. Yes, I’m a little way out from the water's edge, finding a few stones just perfectly placed to step on and still keep my boots dry.
I remember a row of similar stones from years ago and the fun it was when the tide was just at the right point so that I could walk from one to another quite safely. The way I remember it, you could do that for quite a long stretch but there seem to be less of them now. The entire shoreline feels different, but that's understandable. A lot of time has passed since I last walked here. The steps down to the shore have more or less collapsed. They used to sit even and steady, as dependable as my father who was often with me on this shoreline walk.
If anyone could have walked on water, it was he—or that was how my child's mind saw him. Solid as a rock but light as a feather. Light as in agile, able to spring over a fence or cross a ditch with one easy stride, and always remembering to pause and hold out a hand to the child who was following him.
And now I've come to a fence I don't remember, a line stitched down the shore and reaching out into the sea like a great divide between this side and beyond. It doesn't seem new; it's covered in tangles of seaweed and scraps of plastic, proof of the many tides that have washed over it since it was laid down, and further proof if I needed it that it's been a long time since I walked this way.
I feel reluctant to cross it. I don't know if I even can. I think I'll turn back and abandon this effort to retrace a childhood walk with my father.
But he would not have let such a fence block his path, would he?
As if he's beckoning me to follow him, I hoist myself over it, and drop to the other side. Not so difficult after all.
Ah, here are the oystercatchers that used to colonize this shore, their cries sharp as my memory of them. And I see now the long line of stones at the water's edge that are exactly as they used to be. So they were further along the shore and not where I first thought? And they are cleaner here too, with no traces of the greeny scum I noticed at the water's edge earlier. In fact the whole shore looks healthier, smells saltier, and there are millions of limpets and mussels attached to the rocks. There are seals bobbing their heads far out in the waves just like they used to do. My father would point them out with his twenty-twenty vision, and I would squint to see them, short-sighted even then.
And here's an oyster. If he were with me, my father would pull out his penknife, scrape the edges off the shell, and with one neat flick, he'd cleave it apart. Then he'd hand me the pearly plate with its plump morsel, and I'd swallow it down in one easy gulp like a young bird.
I put the unopened oyster in my pocket and continue walking.
On a rock a little way out, I spot the silhouette of a cormorant, its wings spread to dry in the sun. My father called those birds 'black hags', and they do look grim, almost portentous, as they stand perfectly still, their gaze trained as if onto a different time.
I find another oyster and add it to my collection. I step more carefully now in case there are more. In the sandy silt between the stones, I see the trace of a footstep, the double bars from the cleat of a boot perhaps. Someone has walked this way since the tide dropped. I hurry on, looking down for more traces, looking up to squint at the distance.
Then I see a silhouette, hovering dark against the light. Yes, there is someone ahead of me, standing like a rock in the shallows, looking towards me, as if beckoning. In the long moment of my realization, clear and sharp as the cry of an oystercatcher, everything else seems to disappear, the sounds, the smells, the stones beneath my feet.
I step onto the water and hold my hand out to my father.
July 11, 2025
Dorthe Nors, a well-respected author of fiction in her native Denmark, has written a quiet masterpiece of her role in the world, coming to grips with what it means to be a writer -- the solitude, the inability to settle, eyes open to her surroundings, wherever she may be. The North Sea coast, stretching from the northern tip of Denmark, down and left across Germany and finally the northern Netherlands, are her domain. This was not a travel book, in the traditional sense, but was something much more meaningful.
I read this in small chunks over a three-week span, which I think served the book well. Best to read one of the fourteen essays within and let it tumble around in the noggin before moving on. She covers an awful lot of ground in this short book, literally and figuratively. She examines our role in nature, our role in our birth families, our role in our adult families, the impact of economic decisions, the impact of tourism, the impact of floods. None of this is strident or hysterical, but all of it triggers deep feelings.
One of the most satisfying tensions set up here is that between her own life's choices and those of her mother, a woman she clearly admired:
Nors grew up near the coast, but has traveled widely and so has a good idea about what's special about this particular coastline. The North Sea and its storms influence all aspects of life here, and she notes that the obituaries in the local newspapers mention "so-and-so died on Tuesday evening during a falling tide." The tides are always mentioned in these reports, because "God was one thing and the sea was another, and the two things could scarcely be separated." She has great turns of phrase, describing the waves one calm day as "oddly latent, like a cat flicking the tip of its tail."
There's all sorts of interesting facts and opinions here, but in the end what sticks with me is her mother's love, and the way that Nors fulfilled some of her mother's dreams and learned that these dreams come at no small cost:
I read this in small chunks over a three-week span, which I think served the book well. Best to read one of the fourteen essays within and let it tumble around in the noggin before moving on. She covers an awful lot of ground in this short book, literally and figuratively. She examines our role in nature, our role in our birth families, our role in our adult families, the impact of economic decisions, the impact of tourism, the impact of floods. None of this is strident or hysterical, but all of it triggers deep feelings.
One of the most satisfying tensions set up here is that between her own life's choices and those of her mother, a woman she clearly admired:
Like my mother with her fiery red hair....she rode a scooter and backcombed her hair. At school, she was teased for its coppery redness, but she dreamt that it was passed down from an ancestor who had sailed the seven seas. When my dad introduced her to his parents, my grandmother said, "We'll never get that red hair out of the family now," and so it was: my mother passed her red hair on to me.That made me laugh, because it sounds so much like something my own grandmother would have said.
Nors grew up near the coast, but has traveled widely and so has a good idea about what's special about this particular coastline. The North Sea and its storms influence all aspects of life here, and she notes that the obituaries in the local newspapers mention "so-and-so died on Tuesday evening during a falling tide." The tides are always mentioned in these reports, because "God was one thing and the sea was another, and the two things could scarcely be separated." She has great turns of phrase, describing the waves one calm day as "oddly latent, like a cat flicking the tip of its tail."
There's all sorts of interesting facts and opinions here, but in the end what sticks with me is her mother's love, and the way that Nors fulfilled some of her mother's dreams and learned that these dreams come at no small cost:
It was there, one day when I was eleven, that I was nearly dragged out to sea by a wave. I was holding my mother's hand; it was August. My mother grabbed my leg, and we both skidded on the shingle until it let us go. Afterward we sat and cried a bit. Grazes on our legs, blood. My mother was clutching my hand and wouldn't let go. Since then I've called them Valkyrie waves, the kind that rove in from the North Sea in long, elegant swells on otherwise mild days. They'll take you to sea if they can. I'm afraid of them, and every time I see them, I remember love.And later:
I thought of my mother, walking around Skagen Museum and dreaming of a studio with north-facing windows. She walked here dreaming of a life of grapes on pale dishes and Dad's hunting dog at her feet. But in reality, that dog ate our shoes. At some point it learned to open doors with its paws. One time it mauled Dad's poultry to death, and it wouldn't listen to anyone, not anyone. But my mum dreamt of a life of contemplative beauty under a grand sky, with rose bushes in the garden, on her own terms, and I pottered around in my own dreams: of being like the ladies in the pictures. Yes, when you grow up, you will walk on eternally mild summer beaches. You will sit by the paraffin lamp and write while your lover is occupied with his own tasks in the background. You will become a real and beautiful person. You will, but you couldn't, and so you became something else: a movement pinned in one place.She writes equally well of her father, and much else besides. This is a beautiful piece of writing that I will be re-reading for many years to come.
Read
December 20, 2025This is a difficult book for me to review, I would like to write with the sensitivity and nuance that Dors shows. Her prose reminds me of standing in the sea close to shore, feeling the tug of currants and the rolling wave lifting me. I almost regret to inform you that this is a book like flat lands around the north sea, the skies and the waters can one day be grey, and the fields beige. The restless eye can be bored. But slow down, read again, and you can feel mirco-currents, perhaps after a while the sun burns through and with the salt in the air you turn bronze and red. In short this is a book best read twice, maybe more.
In short chapters she moves round the west coast of Denmark, breaking out to Sylt in North Germany and to various Frisian islands where the sea is shallow and can host migrant birds. The section dealing with the Frisian islands and how the men took to the sea, the society that developed without them, and what has become of it, could be used as a generous summery of the novel We, the drowned.
This is the kind of book that I wished David Kirby's Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period would have been, subtle, slow, and evocative. Inevitably Landscape and memory is a strong presence here, although this kind of landscape is not the main focus of that book. There are lovely descriptions of seeing medieval frescoes in Churches, and if I had read more about Art history or the late pre-reformation Church, maybe her words might have put me in mind of other books.
This is a book about the places we belong to, and those that are a part of us even though we are regarded as strangers there, about family, history, the relationship between the metropolis and the lands it rules over, the relationship between the land and the sea, the shoreline a shifting boundary that can be more dynamic than the political boundaries - though those feature in this book too:
On the map beneath me, the land lies as it lies. A distant coast. Unfamiliar and raw, considered from a centre of power. At one time there were scarcely any roads across the broad heaths of the Jutland peninsula to the shores of the North Sea, and there were no bridges between Denmark's countless islands, large and small: the land was matted, impenetrable. But today the distance between this border and its faraway metropolises is largely psychological. There are roads into the system now, bridges over the water, airports and civilised infrastructure. The land coheres, and now it's spread on the desk beneath me, fixed by a map-maker.
But what if I could do what I wanted with time, if I could accelerate it like a piece of time lapse footage where the roses turn from bud to blossom, the line would be alive. The drawing would always be moving. It would bend forwards, shift backwards, open, turn, perforate; then close, then open up again. It would vanish in part beneath heavy masses of ice but be revived as something else, and it would dance, its tail one moment twisting like an eel, fluttering the next like a pennant. It is a living coastline made of sand. Always becoming, always dying. Determined by the forces of the galaxy streaming through the universe, marked by the storms, the wandering of the Sun and the Moon, and human intervention (though the latter is always short lived), the coastline has all the time in the world. It is a long and living tale of tidal waters, subject to the rhythms of day and night, but, in its reckoning of time, to be considered an eternity.
One line in the world. Just one. (pp12-13)
That was a section too long to post as an update while reading.
I loved this too:
"When I was a child, we usually went swimming on what they called 'housewife beaches', places where the local mothers and grandmothers brought their children because they were safe to swim. The young girls stand at an appropriate distance, clad in new bikinis, gold crosses and their mothers' dialects. A sharp watch is kept on the oldest women. Their skin is tanned leather, their hair clipped short. They have tattoos and big, wrinkled cleavages. They can call a child to their side from the open sea. Now and again, a man in a boiler suit walks past and talks to them. They put up with that, but he can't sit down. They've been skinning fish since before they started school. They've ridden Puch Maxi mopeds, they've gone cruising with drunken men in Ford Taunus cars by the dam. They've cooked more chips than you'll ever eat. They've borne their stormy nights. They've cried when he was at sea, and they've cried when he was at home, and they're not for delicate souls. But they are safe swimmers, and if war breaks out, I'd like one of them in my trench. Her and her mother. They've hauled men's mouths over to the drain in the bathroom. When he couldn't get up, they let him lie. When he wanted to stand, they carried him. Fat, thin, sun-creased, cigarette smoking, bathing-suit-stretching beauties in the sand. Always swim near them, because the water is theirs." (pp29-30)
That could be the basis of a novel, or you could read it as sociology and place the social context of the observer and the observed, or indeed the time and place without knowing anything more about the book.
Her parents shift in and out of view, her seven fingered father, her red haired mother unable to go to art college and so who got into the most artistic line of work open to her; the profession of hairdresser.
All this washes over the reader as Dorte Nors over the course of a year travels round the Danish west coast. A lovely book, warmly recommended to all readers salty or not.
Addendum December 2025
Having seen an exhibition of the Skagen artist Anne Ancher, it unlocks other aspects of this book like rootedness as a source of creativity for an artist, there is a tension between the metropolis and the back of beyond, but being outside and away from the centre might give a person freedom to experiment. But there is a risk that your vision is not comprehensible outside of your community. If nors msnages to escape that trap you can judge for yourself if you take the chance of picking up this book.
In short chapters she moves round the west coast of Denmark, breaking out to Sylt in North Germany and to various Frisian islands where the sea is shallow and can host migrant birds. The section dealing with the Frisian islands and how the men took to the sea, the society that developed without them, and what has become of it, could be used as a generous summery of the novel We, the drowned.
This is the kind of book that I wished David Kirby's Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period would have been, subtle, slow, and evocative. Inevitably Landscape and memory is a strong presence here, although this kind of landscape is not the main focus of that book. There are lovely descriptions of seeing medieval frescoes in Churches, and if I had read more about Art history or the late pre-reformation Church, maybe her words might have put me in mind of other books.
This is a book about the places we belong to, and those that are a part of us even though we are regarded as strangers there, about family, history, the relationship between the metropolis and the lands it rules over, the relationship between the land and the sea, the shoreline a shifting boundary that can be more dynamic than the political boundaries - though those feature in this book too:
On the map beneath me, the land lies as it lies. A distant coast. Unfamiliar and raw, considered from a centre of power. At one time there were scarcely any roads across the broad heaths of the Jutland peninsula to the shores of the North Sea, and there were no bridges between Denmark's countless islands, large and small: the land was matted, impenetrable. But today the distance between this border and its faraway metropolises is largely psychological. There are roads into the system now, bridges over the water, airports and civilised infrastructure. The land coheres, and now it's spread on the desk beneath me, fixed by a map-maker.
But what if I could do what I wanted with time, if I could accelerate it like a piece of time lapse footage where the roses turn from bud to blossom, the line would be alive. The drawing would always be moving. It would bend forwards, shift backwards, open, turn, perforate; then close, then open up again. It would vanish in part beneath heavy masses of ice but be revived as something else, and it would dance, its tail one moment twisting like an eel, fluttering the next like a pennant. It is a living coastline made of sand. Always becoming, always dying. Determined by the forces of the galaxy streaming through the universe, marked by the storms, the wandering of the Sun and the Moon, and human intervention (though the latter is always short lived), the coastline has all the time in the world. It is a long and living tale of tidal waters, subject to the rhythms of day and night, but, in its reckoning of time, to be considered an eternity.
One line in the world. Just one. (pp12-13)
That was a section too long to post as an update while reading.
I loved this too:
"When I was a child, we usually went swimming on what they called 'housewife beaches', places where the local mothers and grandmothers brought their children because they were safe to swim. The young girls stand at an appropriate distance, clad in new bikinis, gold crosses and their mothers' dialects. A sharp watch is kept on the oldest women. Their skin is tanned leather, their hair clipped short. They have tattoos and big, wrinkled cleavages. They can call a child to their side from the open sea. Now and again, a man in a boiler suit walks past and talks to them. They put up with that, but he can't sit down. They've been skinning fish since before they started school. They've ridden Puch Maxi mopeds, they've gone cruising with drunken men in Ford Taunus cars by the dam. They've cooked more chips than you'll ever eat. They've borne their stormy nights. They've cried when he was at sea, and they've cried when he was at home, and they're not for delicate souls. But they are safe swimmers, and if war breaks out, I'd like one of them in my trench. Her and her mother. They've hauled men's mouths over to the drain in the bathroom. When he couldn't get up, they let him lie. When he wanted to stand, they carried him. Fat, thin, sun-creased, cigarette smoking, bathing-suit-stretching beauties in the sand. Always swim near them, because the water is theirs." (pp29-30)
That could be the basis of a novel, or you could read it as sociology and place the social context of the observer and the observed, or indeed the time and place without knowing anything more about the book.
Her parents shift in and out of view, her seven fingered father, her red haired mother unable to go to art college and so who got into the most artistic line of work open to her; the profession of hairdresser.
All this washes over the reader as Dorte Nors over the course of a year travels round the Danish west coast. A lovely book, warmly recommended to all readers salty or not.
Addendum December 2025
Having seen an exhibition of the Skagen artist Anne Ancher, it unlocks other aspects of this book like rootedness as a source of creativity for an artist, there is a tension between the metropolis and the back of beyond, but being outside and away from the centre might give a person freedom to experiment. But there is a risk that your vision is not comprehensible outside of your community. If nors msnages to escape that trap you can judge for yourself if you take the chance of picking up this book.
February 12, 2023
Wild, cold, northern, coastal landscapes draw me in. I would rather be hiking on a trail overlooking the Irish Sea with rain needling my face and winds ballooning my jacket than lying on a docile beach in Costa Rica, sipping a mojito. Maybe it's because my home is in one such landscape, the Pacific Northwest's Olympic Peninsula, at once so life-giving and generous, and yet isolated, insular and for several months of year, dark and damp. Difficult is in my blood.
So I was drawn to this series of essays by the Danish writer Dorthe Nors inspired by a year she traversed the forbidding landscape of Denmark's western coast. From the southern Wadden Sea, a region that shares borders with the Netherlands and Germany, to the northern tip of Denmark at Skaggen, Nors explores this singular landscape shaped by the relentless waters and winds of the North Sea. From Vikings to modern-day surfers, humans have been drawn to these shifting sands and monster waves, where the air is laced with salt and riptides can yank you by the ankle and disappear you in the span of a breath.
In contrast to the harsh terrain, Nors writes with expansive tenderness, recounting childhood memories of The Secret Place, her family's seaside cottage that was torn down to make room for a motorway. She writes of a pilgrimage with an artist friend to visit the thirteenth-century frescoes found in ancient churches along the coast. She writes with wonder about migrating birds and the miracle of their biology as they navigate thousands of miles to find just the right stretch of sand, year after year, to nest and birth a new generation. She writes of legends and lighthouses and a way of life that clings to the cliffs, far from the urban centers of Copenhagen and Aarhus, even as those cliffs disintegrate and crash into the sea. There are shipwrecks and wars, environmentalists tilting at windmills and wind turbines far out to sea, providing power to an expanding urban urgency.
There is a timelessness in Dorthe Nors' gentle, spare prose as she contemplates her life without a partner or children, facing middle age. She wavers between the relief of solitude and the ache of loneliness, using the universality of home, belonging, family, and change to convey her affection for and bewilderment at this unforgiving, unwelcoming and yet irresistible space.
Readers who appreciate the intimacy and immediacy of Rebecca Solnit's essays or the way Barry Lopez conveys the natural world in our unnatural existence will love this soulful collection. It's a breath of bracing, cold, stunningly fresh literary air.
So I was drawn to this series of essays by the Danish writer Dorthe Nors inspired by a year she traversed the forbidding landscape of Denmark's western coast. From the southern Wadden Sea, a region that shares borders with the Netherlands and Germany, to the northern tip of Denmark at Skaggen, Nors explores this singular landscape shaped by the relentless waters and winds of the North Sea. From Vikings to modern-day surfers, humans have been drawn to these shifting sands and monster waves, where the air is laced with salt and riptides can yank you by the ankle and disappear you in the span of a breath.
In contrast to the harsh terrain, Nors writes with expansive tenderness, recounting childhood memories of The Secret Place, her family's seaside cottage that was torn down to make room for a motorway. She writes of a pilgrimage with an artist friend to visit the thirteenth-century frescoes found in ancient churches along the coast. She writes with wonder about migrating birds and the miracle of their biology as they navigate thousands of miles to find just the right stretch of sand, year after year, to nest and birth a new generation. She writes of legends and lighthouses and a way of life that clings to the cliffs, far from the urban centers of Copenhagen and Aarhus, even as those cliffs disintegrate and crash into the sea. There are shipwrecks and wars, environmentalists tilting at windmills and wind turbines far out to sea, providing power to an expanding urban urgency.
There is a timelessness in Dorthe Nors' gentle, spare prose as she contemplates her life without a partner or children, facing middle age. She wavers between the relief of solitude and the ache of loneliness, using the universality of home, belonging, family, and change to convey her affection for and bewilderment at this unforgiving, unwelcoming and yet irresistible space.
Readers who appreciate the intimacy and immediacy of Rebecca Solnit's essays or the way Barry Lopez conveys the natural world in our unnatural existence will love this soulful collection. It's a breath of bracing, cold, stunningly fresh literary air.
December 28, 2023
I added this book to my TBR based on Justin's review last spring or summer, half expecting it to languish there for years. (I'm going to have to have an unusually long life to read everything on that shelf, even with periodic purges. Well, that is, unless I give up caring for my wife and our dogs and stop the volunteer work and shed my last remaining consulting client. But none of those things is likely to happen, and thus my TBR will inevitably outlive me.)
But then Candi, also motivated by Justin's review, read the book and wrote a lovely review of her own. And most significantly, we have been spending a considerable amount time in recent months with a Danish couple and their toddler; the mother is a visiting academic in my wife's department. They know so much about American culture, and I know so little of Danish.
And so a few days ago I picked up this series of essays, each of which is focused in some way on the Danish North Sea coast. Although replete with facts about the nature, history and culture of this beautiful though frequently unforgiving locale, Nors intertwines these with her personal experiences and much self-reflection. Periodically she returns to her concept of the schism that forms identity. The space between where you are born, and where you later exist. The way in which you can never really leave that early environment behind, no matter how far you travel.
This isn't an entirely novel idea, but her expression of it resonated with me. Not just the major changes in life and location that become part of our identity, but the nuances attached to small differences in place. The small town where I grew up is nestled in the hills, and when I went to college in a nearby city, I initially found myself filled with unease at its flatness. I adapted before long, but years later, after living in urban environments for decades, I came to depend on a weekend retreat cottage in a location not that different from where I grew up to take the edge off workweek stress.
In short, although I don't share Nors' wanderlust, I do appreciate her descriptions of how places define people, both at the individual and the community level. I too am a lover of wild places, lonely places, small treasures like local churches with long histories.
To learn more about the book overall, I recommend both Justin's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Candi's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) reviews. I agree with Justin that this book should be savored, and some day I would like to pick it up again.
But then Candi, also motivated by Justin's review, read the book and wrote a lovely review of her own. And most significantly, we have been spending a considerable amount time in recent months with a Danish couple and their toddler; the mother is a visiting academic in my wife's department. They know so much about American culture, and I know so little of Danish.
And so a few days ago I picked up this series of essays, each of which is focused in some way on the Danish North Sea coast. Although replete with facts about the nature, history and culture of this beautiful though frequently unforgiving locale, Nors intertwines these with her personal experiences and much self-reflection. Periodically she returns to her concept of the schism that forms identity. The space between where you are born, and where you later exist. The way in which you can never really leave that early environment behind, no matter how far you travel.
This isn't an entirely novel idea, but her expression of it resonated with me. Not just the major changes in life and location that become part of our identity, but the nuances attached to small differences in place. The small town where I grew up is nestled in the hills, and when I went to college in a nearby city, I initially found myself filled with unease at its flatness. I adapted before long, but years later, after living in urban environments for decades, I came to depend on a weekend retreat cottage in a location not that different from where I grew up to take the edge off workweek stress.
In short, although I don't share Nors' wanderlust, I do appreciate her descriptions of how places define people, both at the individual and the community level. I too am a lover of wild places, lonely places, small treasures like local churches with long histories.
To learn more about the book overall, I recommend both Justin's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and Candi's (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) reviews. I agree with Justin that this book should be savored, and some day I would like to pick it up again.
Read
December 10, 2023"I felt no almighty power. Only cold and tenderness. Surrounded by my country, my language, my limitations."
Dorthe Nors grew up on the west coast of Denmark -- the Line, as it's called -- and this book is her memoir of spending a year getting to know it better. Never mind you're only getting to know half of Denmark, as there's no mention of the east side, but still, the west is where all the action is, especially thanks to the tempestuous sea which has thrown its share of shipwrecks and death down the Line.
My kind of book in the sense that it is rich with description of nature, anecdotes, occasional humor and poetic writing, snippets of history, and personal asides about the author's own life and family. A bit of Danish Thoreau, in that sense. Although the map in the front has many of the places she visits, it does not have all. A shame, really, as I was constantly referring to it. Like Nors, I like maps. Paper, not Google.
Denmark is often trumpeted as the happiest country in the world, where the people are taxed almost 50% and are glad for it, as so much of their education and health care concerns are met for "free." Still, they're people like any other. Nors talks of her childhood summer shack, unoccupied winters, how every winter it was broken into, items stolen, squatters evident. Once, blood from a person that broke a window to get in. Not exactly Shangri-La. Nor is her description of her neighbors in a Copenhagen apartment building. Noise. Drugs. And all that unhappy stuff we reserve in our minds for New York City or something.
In the end, you'll get a better feel for Denmark's language, it's Medieval past, it's stone churches, its nautical history, its beaches and harbors, its spirit. Although it may not be the very best in its genre (nature writing slash a-year-in-the-life travel memoir), it holds its own quite nicely, thank you. If you plan on visiting Denmark as I do someday, worth your time and effort.
Dorthe Nors grew up on the west coast of Denmark -- the Line, as it's called -- and this book is her memoir of spending a year getting to know it better. Never mind you're only getting to know half of Denmark, as there's no mention of the east side, but still, the west is where all the action is, especially thanks to the tempestuous sea which has thrown its share of shipwrecks and death down the Line.
My kind of book in the sense that it is rich with description of nature, anecdotes, occasional humor and poetic writing, snippets of history, and personal asides about the author's own life and family. A bit of Danish Thoreau, in that sense. Although the map in the front has many of the places she visits, it does not have all. A shame, really, as I was constantly referring to it. Like Nors, I like maps. Paper, not Google.
Denmark is often trumpeted as the happiest country in the world, where the people are taxed almost 50% and are glad for it, as so much of their education and health care concerns are met for "free." Still, they're people like any other. Nors talks of her childhood summer shack, unoccupied winters, how every winter it was broken into, items stolen, squatters evident. Once, blood from a person that broke a window to get in. Not exactly Shangri-La. Nor is her description of her neighbors in a Copenhagen apartment building. Noise. Drugs. And all that unhappy stuff we reserve in our minds for New York City or something.
In the end, you'll get a better feel for Denmark's language, it's Medieval past, it's stone churches, its nautical history, its beaches and harbors, its spirit. Although it may not be the very best in its genre (nature writing slash a-year-in-the-life travel memoir), it holds its own quite nicely, thank you. If you plan on visiting Denmark as I do someday, worth your time and effort.
May 30, 2024
I don't know how exactly to describe this book. To start, this series of essays is a biography of place, both its history and its present (and its present as defined by its history.) After wearying of Copenhagen Nors departs for a year to travel the North Sea Coast from Skagen at the northern tip of Denmark to the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea. This is a place that is both home and not. She is often surrounded by people who have scarcely been more than a few miles from their lifetime homes and who look at those who have left as traitors. To them she is an interloper, but many of her childhood memories are linked to this place. (I was shocked by how much her experience with people reminded me of my two years in North Dakota.) Her worldliness gives her a perspective that is illuminating and gripping. As much as this is a biography of place though, this is a geography of self. Nors explores her life from her relationship to her delightful parents, through love affairs both fondly remembered and not, via her relationship to and observations of art, and she also gives us thoughtful insight into her life as a writer and thinker. Nors connects all she sees, whether a fresco at the Rijksmuseum, a Viking ship, or a group of Jutlanders talking, things in the lives of her and her family or things happening in the world. But if all of that sounds dry it is not. Nors has a delightful sense of humor and displays disarming candor in the tidbits about her life she shares. These essays are engrossing, and at least in translation often poetic. I dipped in and out of this. I think it would be hard for me to read it straight through. It was perfect before bed reading, one essay at t time.
Thanks to Left Coast Justin for the recommendation, he was right about everything. And a shout-out (not my first) to Greywolf Press. Everything I pick up from them enchants me. They have got to have the best editorial staff in the business.
Thanks to Left Coast Justin for the recommendation, he was right about everything. And a shout-out (not my first) to Greywolf Press. Everything I pick up from them enchants me. They have got to have the best editorial staff in the business.
August 23, 2023
Nors’s first nonfiction work is a surprise entry on this year’s Wainwright Prize nature writing shortlist. I’d be delighted to see this work in translation win, first because it would send a signal that this is not a provincial award, and secondly because her writing is stunning. Like Patrick Leigh Fermor, Aldo Leopold or Peter Matthiessen, she doesn’t just report what she sees but thinks deeply about what it means and how it connects to memory or identity. I have a soft spot for such philosophizing in nature and travel writing.
Nors lives in rural Jutland – where she grew up, before her family home was razed – along the west coast of Denmark, the same coast that reaches down to Germany and the Netherlands. In comparison to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, two other places she’s lived, it’s little visited and largely unknown to foreigners. This can be both good and bad. Tourists feel they’re discovering somewhere new, but the residents are insular – Nors is persona non grata for at least a year and a half simply for joking about locals’ exaggerated fear of wolves.
Local legends and traditions, bird migration, reliance on the sea, wanderlust, maritime history, a visit to church frescoes with Signe Parkins (the book’s illustrator), the year’s longest and shortest days … I started reading this months ago and set it aside for a time, so now find it difficult to remember what some of the essays are actually about. They’re more about the atmosphere, really: the remote seaside, sometimes so bleak as to seem like the ends of the earth. (It’s why I like reading about Scottish islands.) A bit more familiarity with the places Nors writes about would have pushed my rating higher, but her prose is excellent throughout. I also marked the metaphors “A local woman is standing there with a hairstyle like a wolverine” and “The sky looks like dirty mop-water.”
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
You carry the place you come from inside you, but you can never go back to it.
I longed … to live my brief and arbitrary life while I still have it.
This eternal, fertile and dread-laden stream inside us. This fundamental question: do you want to remember or forget?
Nors lives in rural Jutland – where she grew up, before her family home was razed – along the west coast of Denmark, the same coast that reaches down to Germany and the Netherlands. In comparison to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, two other places she’s lived, it’s little visited and largely unknown to foreigners. This can be both good and bad. Tourists feel they’re discovering somewhere new, but the residents are insular – Nors is persona non grata for at least a year and a half simply for joking about locals’ exaggerated fear of wolves.
Local legends and traditions, bird migration, reliance on the sea, wanderlust, maritime history, a visit to church frescoes with Signe Parkins (the book’s illustrator), the year’s longest and shortest days … I started reading this months ago and set it aside for a time, so now find it difficult to remember what some of the essays are actually about. They’re more about the atmosphere, really: the remote seaside, sometimes so bleak as to seem like the ends of the earth. (It’s why I like reading about Scottish islands.) A bit more familiarity with the places Nors writes about would have pushed my rating higher, but her prose is excellent throughout. I also marked the metaphors “A local woman is standing there with a hairstyle like a wolverine” and “The sky looks like dirty mop-water.”
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
October 2, 2022
I was brought up on the opposite side of that wild expanse, the west side of the North Sea in eastern England. A thousand years ago much of the language, even culture in my part of the world was Danish, Viking, and it was called the Danelaw.
And there are still archaic words of old Norse in use today in our rapidly disappearing dialect. So maybe we are, in some ways, still Danes.
Perhaps that's why, when I began to read this ARC, I immediately felt at home. Although Jutland's west coast from Skagen to the German border is north and west facing, opposite to our own, the author's loose, short sentenced yet lucid impressionistic streams of consciousness took me not only across the divide of the North Sea, but also into the past, my own childhood often spent at the windswept seaside and walking wrapped up in barren marshland where the sky towers above you.
In the flat lands of eastern England there is indeed a psychology at play, much like the writer explains; the quietude does not disguise or distract you from the demons inside like a city does. Here you are more with yourself, and it can be difficult, even depressing, particularly in the winter.
She says 'Our brown calves are wet with cuckoo spit', fairly typical of her language which is immediate and sensory, creating a timelessness where past and present merge together, much like the schism of land and sea. She says, throughout the book, that we are defined by schism and I think I know what she means. A country is defined by its border; our selves from one another. A home has its boundary, which is both porous and selective.
In this book the elements are like beings, sometimes friends, but always needing to be respected; the waves like mythological Valkyries: the Norse gods, like Odin, remain in the collective memory of Scandinavians - and isn't Odin rather 'Christ-like', hanging from that ash tree, the Yggdrasil, even if he put himself up there? Yes, our 'civilisation is a snapshot'; we try to understand, perhaps make a mark and then we are gone.
Like my own coastline, Jutland is bedecked with massive wind turbine farms, which to my eye, have become a blot on the seascape as well as the land. Clean energy is to be encouraged, naturally, but these structures which she describes as white trees with circular branches, only have a limited lifespan. Once defunct they will cause a massive landfill problem - and the wind doesn't always blow either.
But I particularly like the way she talks of the past in the present tense in many places, so fitting for this every changing, yet eternal landscape, which has had so many shipwrecks (the Iron Coast) and natural disasters through storms.
I loved her tour of the churches too with the artist, the maker of sketches for this book. My own part of the world is noted for its churches too, but in a different way. And I was not aware that the Reformation in Denmark was slower to whitewash church frescoes than in England and Holland, all very fascinating.
I like the way she describes paths in the landscape as being like memories, connections in the brain, synapses perhaps, testimony to human interaction with the environment and shaping it organically.
Her descriptions of the Wadden Sea, the island life, the bird life, are all beautiful too. I very much relate to the area here being a haven for wading birds, pretty much like my own part of the world.
But ultimately it is Skagen, the very northern tip of Denmark where North Sea meets Baltic, the spiritual pinnacle of the Danish and Scandinavian experience. The schism of seas, between land and sea, our selves from one another: life and death.
Like many, I have only visited Copenhagen when in Denmark, but this great city is in no way representative of Denmark any more than London is of England.
One day, perhaps sooner than I envisage, I wish to visit Denmark again, Jutland in particular, and take that trip from Skagen to Esbjerg and beyond towards the Frisian islands. I think I owe it to myself. Thank you Dorthe Nors for enlightening me - I have never felt more like a Dane.
And there are still archaic words of old Norse in use today in our rapidly disappearing dialect. So maybe we are, in some ways, still Danes.
Perhaps that's why, when I began to read this ARC, I immediately felt at home. Although Jutland's west coast from Skagen to the German border is north and west facing, opposite to our own, the author's loose, short sentenced yet lucid impressionistic streams of consciousness took me not only across the divide of the North Sea, but also into the past, my own childhood often spent at the windswept seaside and walking wrapped up in barren marshland where the sky towers above you.
In the flat lands of eastern England there is indeed a psychology at play, much like the writer explains; the quietude does not disguise or distract you from the demons inside like a city does. Here you are more with yourself, and it can be difficult, even depressing, particularly in the winter.
She says 'Our brown calves are wet with cuckoo spit', fairly typical of her language which is immediate and sensory, creating a timelessness where past and present merge together, much like the schism of land and sea. She says, throughout the book, that we are defined by schism and I think I know what she means. A country is defined by its border; our selves from one another. A home has its boundary, which is both porous and selective.
In this book the elements are like beings, sometimes friends, but always needing to be respected; the waves like mythological Valkyries: the Norse gods, like Odin, remain in the collective memory of Scandinavians - and isn't Odin rather 'Christ-like', hanging from that ash tree, the Yggdrasil, even if he put himself up there? Yes, our 'civilisation is a snapshot'; we try to understand, perhaps make a mark and then we are gone.
Like my own coastline, Jutland is bedecked with massive wind turbine farms, which to my eye, have become a blot on the seascape as well as the land. Clean energy is to be encouraged, naturally, but these structures which she describes as white trees with circular branches, only have a limited lifespan. Once defunct they will cause a massive landfill problem - and the wind doesn't always blow either.
But I particularly like the way she talks of the past in the present tense in many places, so fitting for this every changing, yet eternal landscape, which has had so many shipwrecks (the Iron Coast) and natural disasters through storms.
I loved her tour of the churches too with the artist, the maker of sketches for this book. My own part of the world is noted for its churches too, but in a different way. And I was not aware that the Reformation in Denmark was slower to whitewash church frescoes than in England and Holland, all very fascinating.
I like the way she describes paths in the landscape as being like memories, connections in the brain, synapses perhaps, testimony to human interaction with the environment and shaping it organically.
Her descriptions of the Wadden Sea, the island life, the bird life, are all beautiful too. I very much relate to the area here being a haven for wading birds, pretty much like my own part of the world.
But ultimately it is Skagen, the very northern tip of Denmark where North Sea meets Baltic, the spiritual pinnacle of the Danish and Scandinavian experience. The schism of seas, between land and sea, our selves from one another: life and death.
Like many, I have only visited Copenhagen when in Denmark, but this great city is in no way representative of Denmark any more than London is of England.
One day, perhaps sooner than I envisage, I wish to visit Denmark again, Jutland in particular, and take that trip from Skagen to Esbjerg and beyond towards the Frisian islands. I think I owe it to myself. Thank you Dorthe Nors for enlightening me - I have never felt more like a Dane.
April 6, 2023
I love Nors' fiction, especially her short stories. Her work has form, bite, and feeling. And the best pieces teeter into a space of human understanding I find sharp and compelling. Her sensibility is very much her own. That sensibility is also on display in these essays in a way I can't shake. There's humor and affection, yet the book is its own brew of history and meditation. Nors herself says it best: "I'm not looking for some trumped-up truth about a particular geography. Humans, with our kerosene and short fuses, have been ranting and raving in nature far too long. As much as possible, I'd rather be open to the truth that arises between me and the place, at the moment we meet." Indeed.
November 14, 2022
I’m interested in books where people find beauty in locations that are considered by many to be inhospitable. I was particularly drawn to this spare, beautifully written book about author Dorthe Nors’ relationship with Jutland, located in northern Denmark.
Over the course of a year, in the 14 essays that make up the book, Nors travels to locations that are personally significant to her and her family. Jutland is far removed from Nors' bustling, fast-pasted lifestyle in Copenhagen. She provides historical insight into why people live in a location so susceptible to bad weather, of which there seems to be a great deal. Shipwrecks abound, churches get covered in sand, borders become blocked, and people are solitary and often uncommunicative.
It's not all grim. Communities pull together in times of difficulty and there's a great essay on the positive influence of surfers on locals. Nevertheless, there’s a raw, unsettled beauty in the book, and Nors describes herself as 'a movement pinned in one place.’ I found myself drawn into her writing and her sense of place.
The book is quiet, a little foreboding and utterly beautifully written (and/or translated). I also loved the beautiful line drawings of Jutland landscapes that intersperse the book.
A wonderful book, highly recommended for those interested in a person's sense of place.
Over the course of a year, in the 14 essays that make up the book, Nors travels to locations that are personally significant to her and her family. Jutland is far removed from Nors' bustling, fast-pasted lifestyle in Copenhagen. She provides historical insight into why people live in a location so susceptible to bad weather, of which there seems to be a great deal. Shipwrecks abound, churches get covered in sand, borders become blocked, and people are solitary and often uncommunicative.
It's not all grim. Communities pull together in times of difficulty and there's a great essay on the positive influence of surfers on locals. Nevertheless, there’s a raw, unsettled beauty in the book, and Nors describes herself as 'a movement pinned in one place.’ I found myself drawn into her writing and her sense of place.
The book is quiet, a little foreboding and utterly beautifully written (and/or translated). I also loved the beautiful line drawings of Jutland landscapes that intersperse the book.
A wonderful book, highly recommended for those interested in a person's sense of place.
January 6, 2023
Een soort van ‘Rond de Noordzee’ à la Arnout Hauben, maar dan van een literair veel hoger niveau. De schrijfster laat je de Deense kustlijn zien, voelen en horen door met woorden te spelen als geen ander. Mooi!
September 12, 2024
2.5
Nie do końca moje klimaty. Ma dobre momenty, ale to chyba wszystko.
Nie do końca moje klimaty. Ma dobre momenty, ale to chyba wszystko.
September 19, 2024
I absolutely loved this book! It seemed to start a little slow - but I think it was me, adjusting my brain to a collection of essays about a place I was expecting to be something other than it is.
Clear as mud, right?
Well, I began to realize, as I neared the end of the book, that the whole point 'might be' the journey of that year for the Danish writer, Dorthe Nors. And it became the whole journey 'point' for this non-Danish reader. I have a particular affinity for the North Sea, having first met it when my Dutch then-boyfriend first took me to visit the Delta Project - people who live along the North Sea are.. different...even to their more inland fellow countrymen. It reminds me of my early days here in the rural Midwest - nearly incomprehensible to a Chicagoan. It really is a different way of life - perhaps a different way of looking at life is more accurate. No matter how you choose to describe it, this is an absolutely lovely tale of a very isolated, insular, beautiful area of the world.
Clear as mud, right?
Well, I began to realize, as I neared the end of the book, that the whole point 'might be' the journey of that year for the Danish writer, Dorthe Nors. And it became the whole journey 'point' for this non-Danish reader. I have a particular affinity for the North Sea, having first met it when my Dutch then-boyfriend first took me to visit the Delta Project - people who live along the North Sea are.. different...even to their more inland fellow countrymen. It reminds me of my early days here in the rural Midwest - nearly incomprehensible to a Chicagoan. It really is a different way of life - perhaps a different way of looking at life is more accurate. No matter how you choose to describe it, this is an absolutely lovely tale of a very isolated, insular, beautiful area of the world.
January 19, 2024
An exploration of geography, memory, ancient history, and nature, written in gorgeous prose. The author, Dorthe Nors, captures this segment of coast on the North Sea in a way that brings the reader there, not as a tourist but more like a very wise bird, making human observations.
October 17, 2023
Daha önce Karate Vuruşu’nu okuduğum çağdaş Danimarkalı yazar Dorthe Nors’un, kendi memleketi olan Jutland’ın Batı kıyılarına ilişkin hatıralarını ve bir yıl içinde yaptığı kısa seyahatlerine ilişkin izlenimlerini içeren bu kitabında da aradığımı bulamadım. Zorlama bir derinlik arayışı, pek ikna edici olmayan bir melankoli havası kitaba damgasını vurmuş. Daha da Nors okumam diyerek noktayı koyuyorum:)
April 7, 2024
Well thank you Dorthe Nors for breaking my epic reading slump.
This was a beautifully written, evocative account of Dorthe's time spent travelling along the North Sea coastline, and her experiences with nature, people, history and place.
The writing is poetic, honest, meandering yet cuts straight to the point. I really got a sense of the places the author was seeing here. There are some almost folkloric tales of disappearing churches and disasters at sea, and sober discussions of poisonous chemical factories, Nazi relics and perceptions of unmarried, childless women in remote coastal communities. This book has it all.
I really enjoyed this read and am just sorry it was a library loan as it's a book I'd likely return to in the future.
This was a beautifully written, evocative account of Dorthe's time spent travelling along the North Sea coastline, and her experiences with nature, people, history and place.
The writing is poetic, honest, meandering yet cuts straight to the point. I really got a sense of the places the author was seeing here. There are some almost folkloric tales of disappearing churches and disasters at sea, and sober discussions of poisonous chemical factories, Nazi relics and perceptions of unmarried, childless women in remote coastal communities. This book has it all.
I really enjoyed this read and am just sorry it was a library loan as it's a book I'd likely return to in the future.
September 24, 2023
This book is no ordinary travelogue. It's a loving ode to the Jutland sea coast of Denmark, a place filled with the author's childhood memories. She explores the land, its people, its traditions, its history, both real and legendary. I was left with lovely, imagined scenes of a place I have never visited.
July 29, 2025
It seems unfair to rate the book at all as it is in parts so personal. It was an absorbing read for me. I started to read it on an island in the Wadden Sea and that’s where I had to finish it. In my imagination I traveled with Nors, each place I saw with her eyes, each fact and tale and tradition of the people who settled along the coast, who where forced to let their lives be determined by the sea, who endured and died, who adjusted themselves to nature and can never really succeed. Towns, villages, landscapes were and are created by the sea and some of them destroyed. It’s always the sea which decides, and the wind and the moon. In a floating and contemplative language Nors takes us through the ages and evokes the consciousness of transience of human lives and, yet, persistence. What the sea, especially the Wadden Sea, can teach us, shines vividly between the lines of this beautiful book!
March 18, 2023
Rating: 4.5
Uncle Erling is still dead, and Skaree Cliff will never rise out of the bay again. But the rest of us are still here.
Danish author Dorthe Nors chronicles a year of her life driving up and down the North Sea coast. She details her travels, the history of Denmark, and her nomadic life in search of a home. I love when a book is more than a good book, but a beautiful product. Jo Walker and Signe Parkins' jacket is exquisite. This book looks great on a shelf. Inside, each chapter (at least of this edition) opens with a drawing by Signe Parkins. Nors' words (translation by Caroline Waight) are worthy of the beauty. She is subtle and smart. This is a very clever, beautiful, and reflective travelogue, full of history, memories, and personality. I ache to see this landscape, and to love something as deeply and personally as Nors loves this land.
Read this book. Let it pierce through and remain in you.
Uncle Erling is still dead, and Skaree Cliff will never rise out of the bay again. But the rest of us are still here.
Danish author Dorthe Nors chronicles a year of her life driving up and down the North Sea coast. She details her travels, the history of Denmark, and her nomadic life in search of a home. I love when a book is more than a good book, but a beautiful product. Jo Walker and Signe Parkins' jacket is exquisite. This book looks great on a shelf. Inside, each chapter (at least of this edition) opens with a drawing by Signe Parkins. Nors' words (translation by Caroline Waight) are worthy of the beauty. She is subtle and smart. This is a very clever, beautiful, and reflective travelogue, full of history, memories, and personality. I ache to see this landscape, and to love something as deeply and personally as Nors loves this land.
Read this book. Let it pierce through and remain in you.
October 5, 2022
Het was niet mogelijk om een passender boek te lezen op dit moment. Met een liefde voor het Waddengebied en net terug van mijn reis in het mooie Denemarken, sloot dit boek naadloos aan bij mijn eigen ervaringen en herinneringen. Denemarken staat voor mij voor vele jeugdherinneringen, ik bezocht het land vaak. Dorthe Nors haar woorden, herinneringen, omschrijvingen, haar gesprekken met anderen verweven zich gemakkelijk met je eigen herinneringen. Een poëtische en bijna filosofische reis langs de kustlijn van Skagen tot Den Helder was voor mij emotionerend om te lezen en ik weet zeker dat ik het boek er nog vele malen erbij zal pakken, al is het maar om mijn eigen fijne herinneringen op te halen.
January 10, 2024
Voor het schrijven van dit boek reist Dorthe Nors per auto langs oude bekende plekken. Soms reist ze samen met een vriendin, bijvoorbeeld als ze een tocht maakt langs kerken met eeuwenoude fresco’s. Onderweg spreekt ze allerlei mensen. Dorthe Nors observeert en duidt.
Het is geen boek dat vlot leest. Doordat het gefragmenteerd is, moet ik me er steeds toe zetten om verder te lezen.
https://lalageleest.nl/2024/01/10/lan...
Het is geen boek dat vlot leest. Doordat het gefragmenteerd is, moet ik me er steeds toe zetten om verder te lezen.
https://lalageleest.nl/2024/01/10/lan...
February 3, 2025
Czytając to czuję się częścią Jutlandii, pragnę tam byc, jednoczesnie odczuwam tyle analogii do swojego miejsca na świecie, te same odczucia towarzyszą mi tylko za oknem mam pociągi, a za sobą kominy z Huty, a nie bezkres natury. Jestem pewna, ze tam pojadę! Tak naprawdę juz wyruszyłam w ta podróż z autorką, czułam, ze jednam się ze słonymi łąkami, dałabym im się porwac, gdyby po mnie przyszly, w koncu i tak wobec natury jestem bezbronna.
"Za tych mężczyzna, na których i tak nie mogłyśmy liczyć, Johanne. I za tę czułość, którą mimo wszystko dla nich miałyśmy" (Sønderho)-wioska niezłomnych kobiet
"Wszelka tożsamość powstaje z rozpadu"-5 strona a ja juz wiem, ze zostane do końca, bo właśnie budzę się z najdłuższej hibernacji życia, po całkowitym rozpadzie
"Bo przecież zawsze wiemy z wyprzedzeniem, co nastąpi, zanim to sobie naprawdę uzmysłowimy..."
"Krajobraz to archiwum wspomnień"
"Wszystko to, czego nie możesz opowiedzieć. Twoja historia ukazuje się w przebłysku wspomnień albo pod postacią załamań na powierzchni." (to po prostu ścieżka)
bonde (chlop)- człowiek osiadły, niechętnie sie przemieszcza
overløber-czlowiek, ktory odwiedza inne rejony i robi to z radościa ( a z niemieckiego to ktos kto przechodzi na stronę wroga)
wanderlust-zamilowanie do włóczęgi
"Za tych mężczyzna, na których i tak nie mogłyśmy liczyć, Johanne. I za tę czułość, którą mimo wszystko dla nich miałyśmy" (Sønderho)-wioska niezłomnych kobiet
"Wszelka tożsamość powstaje z rozpadu"-5 strona a ja juz wiem, ze zostane do końca, bo właśnie budzę się z najdłuższej hibernacji życia, po całkowitym rozpadzie
"Bo przecież zawsze wiemy z wyprzedzeniem, co nastąpi, zanim to sobie naprawdę uzmysłowimy..."
"Krajobraz to archiwum wspomnień"
"Wszystko to, czego nie możesz opowiedzieć. Twoja historia ukazuje się w przebłysku wspomnień albo pod postacią załamań na powierzchni." (to po prostu ścieżka)
bonde (chlop)- człowiek osiadły, niechętnie sie przemieszcza
overløber-czlowiek, ktory odwiedza inne rejony i robi to z radościa ( a z niemieckiego to ktos kto przechodzi na stronę wroga)
wanderlust-zamilowanie do włóczęgi
August 23, 2025
I enjoy reading about nature and history and when you read this you will definitely learn a lot about the history of Denmark and the landscape. This isn’t a traditional telling of history. It is part travelogue and a sort of meandering memoir as if the author is thinking out loud about her childhood and her family. It��s not suspenseful or exciting but it is interesting in parts. I mean who knew Denmark had a 1950’s environmental activist who opposed a chemical factory and her information about the Vikings was very interesting. A very nice note is that each essay or chapter starts with a black and white line drawing by Signe Parker. Not at all what I expected.
May 23, 2024
going to be thinking about this one for a while. dorthe nors' writing is so gorgeous and invigorating that i felt like i was staring out at the wadden sea myself. each essay is so masterfully written and feels like an intentional addition to the larger work. it's been a while since i had a book that i wanted to read slowly to really savor every word. easily a new favorite. absolutely begging every and anyone to read this book and book a trip out to western denmark with me immediately.
July 27, 2025
Part exploration, some folklore, mostly reminiscing about a land and sea that is the main character. A land I have a tendency to romanticize, she doesn't but still knowing it's a part of her.
September 24, 2023
"i sensed the lighting in a room that no longer exists. i lost my layers of protection. i felt grief for the losses that have been and the losses to come. i turned the dogs in random directions, wishing i could hold time still, like my father had held it in the snipe. but we can't stop time. we can't escape the force that draws us through the world. we have magnets in our bodies."
November 9, 2022
I enjoyed the unique narrative of Dorthe Nors' novel “Mirror, Shoulder, Signal” so I was curious to experience her first book of nonfiction which is a meditation on the coast of her native Jutland. She visits various points along the line of the map where the land meets the North Sea including villages, churches, lighthouses, power stations and surfing beaches. It's an area where she was raised and where she currently lives, but she poignantly captures the seemingly paradoxical sense of being from this place as well as being a perpetual outsider. She frequently refers to the “schism” where identity is formed. This is an intersection between time, memory, landscape and community which the individual uneasily occupies. At the same time she reflects upon her personal history as well as the factual and mythic history of the people found here. However, she realises that there cannot be one true chronicle as details of the past become muddled: “When does a story begin? Always somewhere else, always further back in the text, beyond the horizon, in the unknown”. What she offers instead is a personalised view of the beauty and dangers of this natural environment as well as the courageousness, warmth and occasional narrow mindedness of its people.
Read my full review of A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors at LonesomeReader
Read my full review of A Line in the World by Dorthe Nors at LonesomeReader
Displaying 1 - 30 of 168 reviews