BOOKPATHS

Bookpath: Karen Blixen Museet, Rungsted Kyst, Denmark

Admirers of Isak Dinesen can visit the popular Karen Blixen Museum in Rungsted, Denmark. The museum occupies Rungstedlund, the home where the author was born on April 17, 1885, grew up, and returned to in 1931 “following 17 years as a farmer in Africa. It was here that she wrote all her internationally renowned stories.” After her death in 1962, Blixen was buried on the property, “at the foot of Ewald’s Hill.” Opened since 1991, the museum explores Blixen’s life and work. It’s rooms “are almost exactly as Karen Blixen decorated and arranged them, giving a vivid impression of the writer’s day-to-day surroundings.” According to her wishes, the grounds are “preserved as a bird sanctuary.” In addition to the museum and gardens, visitors can enjoy a “light meal” in the café or purchase books and other items in the museum store.

For travel information, including hours, fees, and directions, visit The Karen Blixen Museum website.

Bookpath: Odense, Denmark

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense on April 2, 1805. Today, Odense invites visitors to celebrate their native son at the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and Hans Christian Andersen Childhood Home.

The Hans Christian Andersen Museum opened in 1908 in the house where Andersen was born. Exhibitions return visitors to 1805 - 1875, ”the age out of which Andersen’s work originated.” A library houses Andersen editions from all over the world. Visitors can listen to fairy tales at “listening posts,” “leaf through his books via computer,” walk in the garden, make purchases in the bookshop, or enjoy a meal in the café.

The Hans Christian Andersen Childhood Home was where Andersen lived from age two to fifteen. The tiny home, “houses an exhibition on Hans Christian Andersen’s links to his native city of Odense. The exhibition in the Childhood home conform completely to the description Andersen gave of it in his autobiographies.”

Andersen left Odense for Copenhagen in 1819.

The Odense City Museums website offers visitor information, including hours, admission prices, and directions, along with details about the author’s life and work and a walking tour of Andersen’s Odense.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Stephen Metcalf looks for “traces” of Soren Kierkegaard in Copenhagen.

“Toying with multiple selves, shrinking from others for fear of ridicule, dignifying self-pity as martyrdom — is it any wonder I worshiped Kierkegaard in college? This past fall, I flew to Copenhagen to look for traces of my former hero in interpersonal abjection. The public displays for him are discreet and rare: a few plaques, a statue at the Royal Library gardens, a modest collection of furniture in the Copenhagen City Museum. To find Kierkegaard in Copenhagen — and he is still there — one must ignore the tasteful public homage, and look harder.” – from “In the Tidy City of the World’s Most Anxious Man,” by Stephen Metcalf, New York Times