A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast

Me, my notebook and my love of the wild and desolate. I wanted to do the opposite of what was expected of me. It’s a recurring pattern in my life. An instinct.

There is a line that stretches from the northernmost tip of Denmark to where the Wadden Sea meets Holland in the south-west. Dorthe Nors, one of Denmark’s most acclaimed writers, is a descendant of this line; for generations, her family lived among the storm-battered trees and wind-blasted beaches of the North Sea coast. Returning after decades of inhabiting cities, she chronicles a year spent travelling up and down the coast, tracing the history and geography of the places she visits and untangling her relationship with the landscape she calls home.

This is the story of the violent collisions between the people who live in these wild places and the vagaries of the natural world. It is a story of shipwrecks and storm surges, of cold-water surfers, sun-creased beach mums and resolute sailor’s wives. In spellbinding prose, Nors invites the reader on a journey through history and memory - the landscape’s as well as her own.