This article was written by Ann Wallace
As you walk through her peaceful gardens and adjoining forest land, the tourist tape plays a piece of her favourite music: Max Bruch's hauntingly beautiful Violin Concerto. You can take your time; pause and watch the birds for whom this area is a sanctuary, or ponder the mysteries of life and death beside her grave. Here a simple stone bears a large but informal flower arrangement. The flowers have been taken from the gardens. It is the sort of arrangement she might have composed.
You are in the Danish home, turned museum, of Karen Blixen (a.k.a. Isak Dinesen), a woman who was well-known and much-loved in literary circles around the world long before a period of her life was immortalized in the film Out of Africa. Life came full circle for this daughter of Denmark here at Rungstedlund, just 25 km north of Copenhagen, when, after her sojourn in Kenya, she returned to the home that had been owned by her family since 1879.
The house itself has a much longer history. It was well known in North Zealand around 400 years ago when it served as an inn conveniently situated on the Shore Road, the shortest route from the capital to Elsinore, an important trading town and port. Over the years the Inn housed the famous and infamous, who were offered "ale and food of good quality, hay, oats, straw, beds and chambers" as a respite from the rough, muddy road and the winter winds that blow down the Swedish Sound. Late in the 17th century it was granted a license to establish a brewery and distillery on the property and a French Ambassador, en route from Copenhagen to Elsinore, was prompted to record in his 1702 diary, "It is the finest inn in the district ... with a very beautiful garden at the rear, filled with fruit trees and innumerable flowers. There is a hill on the far side of the garden, and a little further off there is a forest which extends two-thirds of the way from Copenhagen to Elsinore."
Advertisement:
