Hi there, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and on today's episode of Women Who Travel, we begin a series on Island Life, spanning everywhere from Tahiti to Vancouver Island.

But today I'm talking to one of our regulars, the Danish writer Dorth Norse, about magical islands in Denmark and Sweden,

everywhere from the rural and remote to ones with the downtown party scene.

Denmark has 500 islands, which gives us a coastline that is bigger than most huge nations in the world.

Living around the water and having these small islands is a very normal thing,

having a summer cottage out there and going there.

And in Denmark we have entirely small communities on islands.

Our islands are a little bigger than some of these Swedish ones.

So there are villages, there are communities, some of them are linked with bridges, but most

of them you have to go by boat. Before we look at these islands and island culture generally,

we'll zoom in on Fano in Denmark's Wadden Sea. It's where Dorth Nors spent a year living and writing.

The Wadden Sea is an enigmatic ocean that goes from Holland to the south of Denmark and crosses

the German border on its way.

It's a big flat sea with a lot of tidal waves and the water comes and goes during

the day. It's a very quiet island and it's super enigmatic, a very, very big, broad, white, flat beaches.

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

You can walk like one kilometers into the ocean without seeing a breaker.

And then it's pine trees and the most picturesque houses you can imagine.

It looks like you're in a fairytale.

All the houses are, of course, protected by the state because they're so original.

But it's super beautiful.

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

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