Hello, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and welcome to women who travel, a podcast for anyone who is curious about the world,

and excited to explore places both near and far from home.

This week, as the Knights in the Northern Hemisphere draw in,

and we think of firesides and candles and lights and bonfires,

it's a time when you can't help but indulge in whispering stories about ghosts and witches.

A few weeks ago, I chatted with author Dauphanors about her decision to upsticks and merely to the isolated and rugged Danish coast.

We chatted about her respect for the ocean, solitude, cold weather surfing and witches.

It's a crazy tradition.

It's a... I mean, we have this bonfire on the 23rd of June because of the

the solstits, the shortest night of the year.

And that's beautiful. We've had that since forever, since, I mean, maybe for thousands of years, we've done that.

But then I think in the 1920s, somebody came up with this ridiculous stupid idea that we should put a witch on it because, and then burn the witch, because that would be like burning all evil and darkness and stuff like that.

And for some stupid reason, that caught on like, like, you know, lighting a Christmas tree, you know.

At least that's positive.

I mean, and when I was a child, it was either witches or trolls, it could also be a male

witch, a troll.

It's the idea was to, to burn evil.

And it's very suspicion and heartbreaking that we thought that that must be a woman.

And every year there are riots because of this, and there are big articles and newspaper about stop burning women on the stake.

Come on.

And still you'll find witches on stakes and bonfires

all over the silver country. I think the trend will disappear. That's my personality. I think the

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