Nors, known primarily as a fiction writer, here embarks on a languorous and evocative tour of her native Denmark ... The dramas of the past are evoked not so much through individual characters as through their traces—buildings, ruins, shipwrecks—and this westerly Denmark is less the land of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and sleek Georg Jensen designs than a place of ancient landscapes steeped in myth ... People aren’t wholly incidental to the narrative. Nors introduces us to a variety of colorful characters, and shares vivid memories of her family’s time in a cabin on the coast south of Thyborøn. But in a way that recalls the work of Barry Lopez, nature is at the heart of this beautiful book, framed in essay-like chapters, superbly translated by Caroline Waight.
Who else could have done justice to this wild landscape, the stubborn psyche of its inhabitants, its brutal myths and its toxic industry? ... This elegant and assonant translation by Caroline Waight is a further welcome import ... A journey in her company is never a dull prospect ... Along this mutable coast, on the border between map and myth, Nors is in her element.
The resulting travelogue captures a side to Denmark that few will find familiar — the literal and figurative opposite of the country’s cosmopolitan capital, Copenhagen ... Though these memorable historical tidbits are among the most visceral details in her work, A Line in the World is as much an appraisal of this troublingly beautiful landscape as it is an exploration of Nors’s identity. In her attempt to understand the shapeshifting Danish peninsula, combing over the history, traditions and myths of the region, she is making sense of this world and her place within it ... In that sense, this is no tourist’s guide to Denmark’s relatively barren coastline. Instead of dwelling on overfamiliar marketing concepts like hygge or references to Nobu, as writers fresh to Denmark often do, Nors reflects on the vital specificity of a place not often frequented by visitors, as well as its impact on the psyche ... Such details provide rare insight into a region where daily life is often spent in monotonous solitude and where tourists and new residents alike can find it difficult to break through the tough facades; where the slower tempo of life is driven by the sea and its moods, the rhythms tethered to a predictable yet finicky tide ... one of the first books to capture the unique region in English. In prose that is as sparse and quiet as the marshy Jutland peninsula itself, the book provides a snapshot of life in a location that is full of history and at the same time ever-shifting, its future uncertain.
For readers whose knowledge of Denmark is confined to Copenhagen and its environs, Danish writer Dorthe Nors's A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast will come as a revelation. In 14 eloquent, observant essays that combine journalism, nature writing and memoir, Nors paints a vivid portrait of a remote and rugged territory whose striking scenery masks more than its share of dangers ... In some of the book's most dramatic passages, Nors offers colorful descriptions of the raging North Sea gales, whose hurricane-force winds and murderous storm surges periodically batter this coastline ... Nors's prose, translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight, is both economical and expressive. When she's writing about nature she has a pleasing knack for engaging all the senses, and when she turns to some aspect of her family history, her candor is seasoned with a pinch of Scandinavian reserve. For all these reasons and more, A Line in the World will appeal to a wide audience of discerning and curious readers.
Nors brings Denmark’s western coast to life ... Each essay offers an exquisite, layered exploration of a different stretch of that wild North Sea coast ... Nors is one of Denmark’s best-known living writers, and the possibility that this project might not have existed soon comes to feel unimaginable, as each chapter unfolds in poetry that becomes as much an exploration of self as one of place ... In inviting readers to her corner of the world, Nors reveals the intimate secrets and memories that make a place real ... no ordinary travel memoir, and its line connects the stories of each place like living tissue. Nors observes what others would not, mixing memory, history, nature, culture, and journalism in a deeply personal exploration of Danish geography ... leaves readers fully steeped in places that are rarely trod ... Waight’s beautiful translation is a gift, rendering one of the few books on this region in captivating prose. What’s unexpected is the familiarity English readers may find in these far-off places ... There are many lines in this world to contemplate, but in accompanying Dorthe Nors along this one, we access something of the universal in the search for identity and belonging.
Sensitively translated ... At first glance, A Line in the World is organized with reassuring verticality. The essay names in the table of contents mirror the downward sweep of the names of coastal towns, drawn on a map following the table of contents...The reader expects a gentle sweep from the top of the map to the bottom, a predictable downward stream of travel narrative. I went here, I saw this. But Nors—a perceptive thinker of 'place-bound memories' and, presumably, an eager reader of Sebald—is too formally inventive for that ... linear in the way memory is linear: it is, until you realize it’s not ... The hum of impending destruction is audible in each essay, magnified by Nors’ aching attention to the world as we know it and have known it. She is a keen observer, though not a naïve one ... In thinking more broadly about loss and landscape, Nors focuses on the slow phasing out of this way of life and its uniform.
In a thorough but unsystematic fashion, the writing encompasses the nature, history and provincial customs of this harsh and highly romanticized corner of the country...as she explores the area she sensitively sifts the ambiguities of belonging in the world and the condition of loving a place she knows will never love her equally in return ... Curious, memorable details like this crop up everywhere in A Line in the World, as Ms. Nors is ever on the hunt for the secret seams of passion—whether from terror or jubilation—beneath the stark surface of the land and behind the faces of its button-lipped inhabitants ... possesses the humbler virtues of discernment and admiration. Ms. Nors’s fiction can be quite funny and outspoken but the tone here, in Caroline Waight’s translation, is gentle and considered. It has clearly been her intention to avoid both tourist gawking and big-city condescension, and the result is both revealing and respectful. It struck me as a rare thing to read a work of travel writing that was this beautiful yet did not provoke in me any desire to actually visit the place. I hope that Ms. Nors’s neighbors will appreciate her honesty and discretion and forgive her for the sin of speaking about their world.
Such frankness is as rare as it is refreshing in modern travel writing, a genre so vulnerable to the shallow and saccharine. Like the raw, elegant landscape she sets out to describe, Nors’ prose blends the delicate with the direct ... It is the sea, however, where Nors really reveals her mastery ... Touchingly personal and poetic, A Line in the World makes no effort to sell its subject. Instead, its 14 short chapters see Nors tussle with a place brimming with memories and strangeness, where storms surge and lighthouses blink. Fun, Jutland may not be, but it sure sounds fascinating.
The book and its themes make me think of a tiny saffron salamander, the red eft, that lives on my land, and that creature’s deep sense of place ... In her stories, the characters are often women in danger of disappearing into middle-aged invisibility. They are also funny, written with almost blunt affectlessness that, at least in translation, hews to the Danish habit of not drawing too much attention to oneself ... Each chapter is pieced from elements that seem random yet are so carefully constructed that to quote them neuters her writing’s power.
... a masterpiece of place-based nonfiction with soothing, rhythmic sentences that mask the intrusive outside world like a white noise machine ... Nors has a gift for figurative language, for linking people and nature ... the sort of essay collection that rewards pause. It’s possible to read in one swoop, as I did initially, drawn in by the cadence of her sentences and reading forward to discover how else this narrator would surprise me ... there’s a rhythmic, calming quality to this book. I plan to re-read it, one day, on a cold, desolate beach.
To envision the prose of this book as a scalpel—spare, glinting, cold but also warmed by the wielder’s hand—is apt ... Though Nors is sparing in the inclusion of personal details, only lightly sketching the heartbreak of a relationship with a married man and grief over an uncle killed in a car crash in various points across the book, the larger project of the book is rich with the revealing of emotional truth.
... graceful, lyrical ... deft and offhand pieces ... As the book progresses, Nors touches on a variety of intriguing rituals and landmarks ... An intricate reckoning with a world that, despite our best attempts to tame it, remains elemental and wild.
