Lögberg-Heimskringla - 13.07.1990, Page 5

Lögberg - Heimskringla • Föstudagur 13. júlí 1990 • 5
Guest of
the Danish Academy
Thorkild Bjernvig and Karen Blixen, about 1950.
“There you are,” I said, “there you
are.” I wasn’t even aware that I had said it
out loud until I read it the next day in
Politiken, the Danish newspaper. Several
people had been leading me through the
woods of the Rungstedlund estate but I
had been so intent on answering the re-
porter’s questions that I had scarcely
noticed whére we were going, until we
stopped under the spreading branches of
an enormous beech tree set in a grassy
chained-off clearing wherein lay the re-
mains of Karen Blixen, the author Isak
Dinesen.There she was, the person I had
been living with for the past two years,
and there I was, at her home in
Rungstedlund,,the 40-acre estate whose
house and land are, under the terms of
Blixen’s will, preserved “as a private insti-
tution ... [with] a bird sanctuary on the
property, and... the main building avail-
able for cultural and scientific pursuits.” I
never dreamed that would include me.
For five days last spring I was the sole
occupant of Karen Blixen’s home, a guest
of the Danish Academy, which provided
food and drink for me and my daily visi-
tor, himself an Academy member, Dan-
ish poetThorkild Bjornvig. Well, I wasn’t
quite the sole occupant of the building.
On the other side of the green room
wall is an apartment occupied by Caroline
Carlsen, Blbcen’s housekeeper for the
last dozen years of her life. Mrs. Carlsen
has been granted this home for her life
under theterms of Blixen’swill. Although
the apartment has a legitimate outside
entrance, there is also a secret door into
the green room, part of a wall panel painted
green (Lord Byron’s green, I was told) to
blend inwith therestof theroom. Carlsen
always used this door when she came to
talk to Thorkild or me, stepping carefully
over the threshold so as not to jar the ash
from the cheroot in her mouth, removing
the cheroot only when necessary to cough
violently.
Mrs. Carlsen had agreed to cook
Thorkild’s and my dinners during my
stay but then she got too sick. She cel-
ebrated her seventy-eighth birthday on
the last day I was there. (I had to content
myself with giving her chocolates because
there was no schnapps at the corner
store.) She spoke a Uttle English but I
managed to understand some of her
Danish because she has a habit of re-
peating herself for emphasis, and
Thorldld would give me swift footnotes
so that I could follow what she was say-
ing.
In her latter days, when her horrible
illness made it impossible for her to sleep
for pain, the Baroness would ring for
Carlsen - two rings, that was her signal
and Caroline would get up and sit by her
employer’s bed and talk to her and com-
fort her.
“You are so good, Mrs. Carlsen,” the
Baroness would say, “You are so good to
me.” She died in Caroline’s arms at 5 p.m;
on September 7,1962.
Rungsted is a suburb about 20
kilometers from Copenhagen on the
Strandvej, half way to Elsinore. In Blixen’s
day,and before,the house wasjustacross
a narrow road from the sea and the author
used to take a morning swim early and
late in the season and late in her life. Now
the four-lane Strandvej looks over a forest
of masts belonging to all the boats in the
marina and it’s worth your life to cross it
on foot in the rush hour. You can still see
the sea from Blixen’s upstairs bedroom
window, but it’s much more pleasant, and
quieter, to look from the windows of the
green room at the back, out across the
lawn to the pond with its ducks (and eight
new ducklings when I was there) and the
little white bridge that leads over to the
woods with its tame foxes (Mrs. Carlsen
feeds them) and the grave at the base of
Ewald’s Hill.
About thathill: I had lived with it in my
imagination, and written it into a scene in
my play (not yet produced). My charac-
ters were out of breath climbing it, could
look at the sea from its height, and feel
the wind iift their hair. In actuality the hill
is a small knoll, approached by an easy
path that winds itself around and up to it,
overhung with towering trees that ob-
scure the view of the sea. But there is a
stone bench to rest on and a small needle
monument marking Ewald’s connection
with the hill and the Politiken photogra-
pher took Thorkild’s and my picture sit-
ting on the bench. I rewrote the scene.
The Danish lyricpoet JohannesEwald
lived as a lodger at the Rungsted Inn from
1773 to 1776, according to the plaque in
the front hall of the house. The building
was licensed as an inn
*... UNDER CHRISTÍAN II (about 1520)
“KING KARLXIIOF SWEDEN STAYED
HERE AFTER LANDING IN HUMLEBEK
ABOUT1700
“WILHELM DINESEN (Blixen’s father)
BOUGHTITAND LIVED HERE FROM1879
TILL HIS DEATH IN 1895
KAREN BLIXEN WAS BORN HERE
AND THE FAMILYAND SHE LIVED HERE
TILL 1958. THE RUNGSTEDLUND FOUN-
DATION WASFORMED ANDTHE ESTATE
NAMED A BIRD SANCTUARY (“fugleres-
ervat” beautiful word!)
AFTER KAREN BLIXEN’S DEATH THE
BUILDING BECAME A HOME FOR THE
DANISH ACADEMY”
Blixen didn’t die until 1962, but the
Foundation became the owner of
Rungstedlundin 1958. Onepresumesthat
the baroness then leased her home from
the foundation. She was made a charter
member of The Danish Academy when it
was founded in 1960 and monies were
finally found to renovate the rambling,
uncomfortable, cold, charming house.
All the arrangements had something
to do with taxes, according to Blixen’s
good friend, Knud Vig-Jensen, founder
and director of the modem art gallery,
Louisiana.
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seniors and youths, children 12 and under free
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