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Lise Norgaard, the screenwriter who wrote the popular TV drama Matador about the lives of ordinary Danish families during the 1930s and the hard times of the Second World War, has died aged 105.

Norgaard died on Sunday after a brief illness, her family said on Monday. She is also known for having written her 1992 Memoirs Kun En Pige, recounting her struggle to become a female reporter.

She worked at major Danish newspapers, including Politiken and Berlingske. She started her career at local newspaper Roskilde Dagblad in her home town of Roskilde.

“We say goodbye to a national treasure,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Instagram. “A strong and people-loving woman who was never afraid to take the lead. She gave us Matador. A piece of Danish history.”

Danish politicians tweeted on Monday in honour of Norgaard.

Culture minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt said that “culture has lost a piece of life. And Denmark an important witness and contributor to its contemporaries”.

German Ambassador Pascal Hector tweeted that her television show Matador, which he called a “masterpiece” was “my first encounter with the Danish language and the country’s history”.

The setting for 24-episode Matador, which was first broadcast in 1978 and shown as repeats over the years, was a fictitious Danish town named Korsbaek.

Several Danish actors got their breakthroughs in the four-season show, which ended in 1982, and part of the make-believe town was recreated in a Danish amusement park.

Norgaard retired as a writer and a lecturer in 2018.