Doggerland

‘ The Road meets Waiting for Godot : powerful, unforgettable, unique’ Melissa Harrison, author of At Hawthorn Time. Doggerland is a superbly gripping debut novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival – set on an off-shore windfarm in the not-so-distant future. ‘His father’s breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. He had knotted and unknotted a strap on the bag he was holding – he must have been leaving to go out to the farm that day. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, ok?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.’ In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres. The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work, scoured by wind and salt, as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory. So too is the Boy’s father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared. The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer. As his companion dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges… This beautifully crafted novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival, is as haunting as it is compelling – a very special debut indeed.

‘ The Road meets Waiting for Godot : powerful, unforgettable, unique’ Melissa Harrison, author of At Hawthorn Time. Doggerland is a superbly gripping debut novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival – set on an off-shore windfarm in the not-so-distant future. ‘His father’s breath had been loud in the small room. It had smelled smoky, or maybe more like dust. He had knotted and unknotted a strap on the bag he was holding – he must have been leaving to go out to the farm that day. ‘I’ll get out,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll come back for you, ok?’ The boy remembered that; had always remembered it. And, for a time, he’d believed it too.’ In the North Sea, far from what remains of the coastline, a wind farm stretches for thousands of acres. The Boy, who is no longer really a boy, and the Old Man, whose age is unguessable, are charged with its maintenance. They carry out their never-ending work, scoured by wind and salt, as the waves roll, dragging strange shoals of flotsam through the turbine fields. Land is only a memory. So too is the Boy’s father, who worked on the turbines before him, and disappeared. The boy has been sent by the Company to take his place, but the question of where he went and why is one for which the Old Man will give no answer. As his companion dredges the sea for lost things, the Boy sifts for the truth of his missing father. Until one day, from the limitless water, a plan for escape emerges… This beautifully crafted novel about loneliness and hope, nature and survival, is as haunting as it is compelling – a very special debut indeed.

I sin nye novellesamling Doggerland bevæger Vagn Remme sig mellem hverdagslivets konkrete rum og brudflader i europæisk erindring. Fra baggårde og banegårde til krigslandskaber og stille kyststrækninger skildrer han mennesker i opløsning, men også med glimt af forsoning. Remmes prosa er rå og præcis, med en sanselighed der både rammer kroppen og historien. Novellerne væver socialrealistiske scener sammen med drømmeagtige fragmenter, hvor virkelighed og mareridt smelter sammen. Men Doggerland lukker også op for lysere stemninger: den afsluttende novelle "Ved havet" giver et blik mod ro, nærhed og mulige nye begyndelser. Med denne samling afslutter Vagn Remme sin novelletrilogi (efter Øresundsvej, 2003 og Fra hinanden, 2023) og sin konsekvente undersøgelse af, hvordan vi lever videre efter det, der bryder sammen – i familien, i kærligheden, i samfundet.

I sin nye novellesamling Doggerland bevæger Vagn Remme sig mellem hverdagslivets konkrete rum og brudflader i europæisk erindring. Fra baggårde og banegårde til krigslandskaber og stille kyststrækninger skildrer han mennesker i opløsning, men også med glimt af forsoning. Remmes prosa er rå og præcis, med en sanselighed der både rammer kroppen og historien. Novellerne væver socialrealistiske scener sammen med drømmeagtige fragmenter, hvor virkelighed og mareridt smelter sammen. Men Doggerland lukker også op for lysere stemninger: den afsluttende novelle "Ved havet" giver et blik mod ro, nærhed og mulige nye begyndelser. Med denne samling afslutter Vagn Remme sin novelletrilogi (efter Øresundsvej, 2003 og Fra hinanden, 2023) og sin konsekvente undersøgelse af, hvordan vi lever videre efter det, der bryder sammen – i familien, i kærligheden, i samfundet.

This popular-science book tells the story of one of the most important, but least known major archaeological sites in Europe: Doggerland. Few people know that the beaches along the North Sea lie on the edge of a vast lost world. A prehistoric landscape that documents almost a million years of human habitation and lay dry for most of that time. Doggerland is where early hominids left the first footprints in northern Europe, more than 900,000 years ago. Later, for hundreds of thousands of years, it was the scene of ice ages. A world of woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses, horses and reindeer and the successful Neanderthals who hunted them, including Krijn: the first Neanderthal from Doggerland. At the end of the last Ice Age, the first modern humans also left their traces here, including the famous Leman-and-Ower-Banks spearhead - the first documented Doggerland find - and some of the oldest art in the region. With the onset of the Holocene, our current era, Doggerland's inhabitants were increasingly confronted with climate change and rising sea levels, just as we are today. The Mesolithic hunter-gatherers lived in a rich, but constantly changing world - to which they successfully adapted. Ongoing submergence and a huge tsunami around 6150 BC marked the beginning of the end. A few centuries later, the last islands disappeared under the waves and with them the story of Doggerland was lost in time. This book brings this vanished world back to the surface.