Karen Blixen Museum

Why it is renowned

Karen Blixen wrote Out of Africa, published in 1937, about her years in Kenya under the name Isak Dinesen.¹² Sydney Pollack's 1985 film of the book, with Meryl Streep as Blixen and Robert Redford as Denys Finch Hatton, won seven Academy Awards, Best Picture among them.² Rungstedlund is the house she came home to, and it has been kept largely as she left it.¹³ Lonely Planet's guide to the Copenhagen Coast puts the Karen Blixen Route, which starts in the park around the museum, first among the things to do on the coast.⁴

The story

The oldest part of the house dates from about 1680, when it was an inn; the poet Johannes Ewald lived there from 1773 to 1775.¹ Blixen's father, Wilhelm Dinesen, bought the estate in 1879, and she was born there in 1885.¹ She returned from Africa in 1931, wrote most of her work in the Ewald Room and lived there until her death in 1962.¹ In 1958 she and her siblings set up the Rungstedlund Foundation to own the estate, and the museum opened in 1991.¹ The rooms keep her furniture and books, a complete collection of her oil paintings hangs in the house, and her grave lies at the foot of Ewald's Mound in the 16.6-hectare park, most of it a bird sanctuary.¹

What to know it by

• The Ewald Room¹Where Blixen wrote most of her work
• Blixen's paintings¹Karen BlixenA complete collection of her oil paintings
• Ewald's Mound¹1962Her grave in the park
• Rungstedlund Park¹16.6 hectares, most of it a bird sanctuary