The island effect: how tiny Skrova became a fishing and artist haven

Like sophisticated gardens encased in glass, islands fascinate us for a reason. They can warp reality with singular perceptions and all sorts of endemisms. Can they also revive the aura of art?

Anthropologists believe that a diminutive humerus bone found on the island of Flores belongs to an adult's arm and not to a child's, as initially presumed. The environmental constraints set at an island may have caused homo erectus, which had expanded across Eurasia during the earliest human waves outside Africa, to shrink in size.

Martin Otterbeck is a …