Baroness Karen Christentze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries; Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries; Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while in Kenya, and for one of her stories, "Babette's Feast." Both have been adapted as films and each won Academy Awards. She is also noted, particularly in Denmark and the United States, for her Seven Gothic Tales. Among her later story collections are Winter's Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958), and Ehrengard (1963). The latter was adapted to film in 2023 as the romantic comedy Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction.
Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but failed to win, according to Danish reports, because of the judges' concern with perceptions of favoritism towards Scandinavian writers.
Biography
Karen Christentze Dinesen was born on April 17, 1885, in Rungstedlund, a place north of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen (1845–1895), was a writer, army officer, and politician. He fought in the Second Schleswig War, which was a conflict between Denmark and Prussia, and also joined the French army against Prussia. He later wrote about the Paris Commune. He came from a wealthy family of landowners in Jutland who were closely connected to the Danish monarchy, the church, and conservative politics. He was elected as a member of Parliament.
Her mother, Ingeborg Westenholz (1856–1939), was from a wealthy family of ship owners who were Unitarians. Karen Dinesen was the second oldest of five children in her family. Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, served in World War I and earned the Victoria Cross. Karen was known to her friends as "Tanne."
Karen’s early life was influenced by her father’s love of the outdoors, hunting, and writing. He wrote throughout his life, and his book Boganis Jagtbreve (Letters from the Hunt) became a well-known work in Danish literature. When he was in his mid-20s, he lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin from August 1872 to December 1873 and had a child.
After returning to Denmark, he suffered from syphilis, which caused long periods of depression. He had a child out of wedlock with his maid, Anna Rasmussen, and was deeply upset because he had promised his mother-in-law to stay faithful to his wife. He died by suicide on March 28, 1895, when Karen was nine years old.
After her father’s death, Karen’s life at Rungstedlund changed. From age 10, her life was shaped by her mother’s family, the Westenholz. Unlike her brothers, who went to school, Karen was educated at home by her maternal grandmother and her aunt, Mary B. Westenholz. They raised her in the Unitarian tradition. Her aunt, Bess, had a strong influence on Karen, and they often discussed topics like women’s rights and relationships between men and women.
During her early years, Karen spent time at her mother’s family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. Later, she visited Folehavegård, an estate near Hørsholm that belonged to her father’s family. She missed the freedom she had when her father was alive and found comfort in telling her younger sister, Ellen, exciting bedtime stories inspired by Danish folk tales and Icelandic sagas. In 1905, these stories led to her writing Grjotgard Ålvesøn og Aud, which showed her early literary talent. Around the same time, she published fiction in Danish magazines under the name Osceola, which was the name of her father’s dog.
In 1898, Karen and her two sisters spent a year in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French. In 1902, she studied art at Charlotte Sode’s school in Copenhagen and later at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Viggo Johansen from 1903 to 1906. In her mid-20s, she also visited Paris, London, and Rome for study trips.
Karen spent holidays with her paternal cousin’s family, the Blixen-Fineckes, in Skåne, Sweden. She fell in love with her second cousin, Baron Hans von Blixen-Finecke. When Hans did not return her feelings, she began a relationship with his twin brother, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke. The couple announced their engagement on December 23, 1912, to the surprise of their family.
Because both Karen and Bror had difficulty settling in Denmark, their family suggested they move abroad. Karen’s uncle, Aage Westenholz (1859–1935), who had made money in Siam, suggested they go to Kenya to start a coffee farm. He and Karen’s mother invested 150,000 Danish krone in the venture. In early 1913, Bror left for Kenya, and Karen followed him in December 1913.
Soon after arriving in Kenya, which was then part of British East Africa, Karen and Bror married in Mombasa on January 14, 1914. After her marriage, she was known as Baroness Blixen and used that title until her ex-husband remarried in 1929. Bror had studied agriculture at Alnarp and managed the Stjetneholm farm in the Nasbyholm estate. Karen and Bror planned to raise cattle but later decided coffee would be more profitable. The Karen Coffee Company was started by their uncle, Aage Westenholz, who named it after Karen, Blixen’s cousin, not after Karen Blixen herself. Their first farm, Mbagathi, was established in the Great Lakes area.
During World War I, when Germany and Britain fought in East Africa, Bror worked with Lord Delamere’s patrols along Kenya’s border with German Tanganyika. Karen helped transport supplies. The war caused shortages of workers and supplies, but in 1916, the Karen Coffee Company bought a larger farm, Mbogani, near the Ngong Hills southwest of Nairobi. The property covered 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares): 600 acres (240 hectares) for a coffee plantation, 3,400 acres (1,400 hectares) for grazing by local people, and 2,000 acres (810 hectares) of untouched forest.
The land was not ideal for coffee because of its high elevation. The couple hired local workers, including Kikuyu, Wakamba, Kavirondo, Swahili, and Masai people. Bror initially managed the farm but soon left running it to Karen while he went on safaris. English became Karen’s daily language during this time. She later wrote about life in Africa:
"Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here
Legacy
Karen Blixen received many awards for her writing. In 1949, she was given the Danish Holberg Medal. In 1952, she received the Ingenio et Arti medal. In 1955, she was the first person to get the Hans Christian Andersen Scholarship from the Danish Writers Association. In 1959, she received the Henrik Pontoppidan Memorial Foundation Grant. The Swedish Academy’s Nobel committee suggested she win the 1959 Nobel Prize in Literature. However, a member named Eyvind Johnson, who later won the prize in 1974, disagreed. He thought Scandinavians had too many Nobel winners. Instead, the Academy chose the Italian poet Salvatore Quasimodo. Later, two members of the Academy, Kjell Espmark and Peter Englund, said this decision was a mistake. Espmark believed Blixen might have been more widely accepted than other Scandinavian winners and that the Academy missed a chance to help more women win the prize. When Ernest Hemingway won the prize in 1954, he said Blixen, along with others, deserved it more than he did. In 1961, she finished third in the Nobel Prize voting, behind Graham Greene. In 2012, old records from 1962 were opened. They showed Blixen was among a shortlist of writers considered for the prize, including John Steinbeck, who won, and others. Blixen died in September 1962 and was no longer eligible.
Clara Svendsen, Blixen’s former secretary, wrote a book in 1974 called Notes about Karen Blixen. It described how Blixen changed from a young woman in Africa to a famous writer. Svendsen shared personal stories about Blixen’s life. Blixen’s great-nephew, Anders Westenholz, wrote two books about her. One was The Power of Aries: myth and reality in Karen Blixen’s life (1982), and another was The Forgotten Ape: man and woman in Karen Blixen (1985).
Karen Blixen’s face was on the Danish 50-krone banknote from 1999 to 2005. She also appeared on Danish stamps in 1980 and 1996. An asteroid, 3318 Blixen, was named after her on her 100th birthday. In 2010, Google honored her 125th birthday with a special image on its homepage. A Spanish movie titled Karen, released in 2021, showed her life in Africa. It was directed by María Pérez Sanz, and Blixen was played by Christina Rosenvinge.
Blixen lived most of her life at Rungstedlund, a family estate in Rungsted, Denmark. The estate was bought by her father in 1879. The oldest parts of the house date to 1680, and it was once an inn and a farm. She wrote most of her books in a room named after Johannes Ewald.
In the 1940s, Blixen considered selling the estate because it was expensive to maintain. However, young writers and thinkers, like Thorkild Bjørnvig and Frank Jæger, used the house as a meeting place for discussions. After repairs in the late 1950s, the estate became a museum managed by the Rungstedlund Foundation, which Blixen and her siblings started. The museum opened to the public in 1991 and joined the Nordic museum network in 2013.
When Blixen returned to Denmark in 1931, she sold her land in Kenya to a developer named Remi Martin. The area where she farmed coffee became a neighborhood called Karen, named after her. A company called the "Karen Coffee Company" was later formed, but it was named after Martin’s daughter, not Blixen.
The original farmhouse Blixen lived in was given to Kenya in 1964 as a gift. A college was built there, and later, the site became part of the National Museums of Kenya. A museum about Blixen opened in 1986, featuring items she owned. The house is now a cultural landmark, showing both Kenya’s European history and a style of 19th-century architecture.
Works
A large number of the Karen Blixen archive at the Royal Danish Library includes unpublished poems, plays, and short stories written by Karen Dinesen before she married and moved to Africa. During her teenage years and early 20s, she likely spent much of her free time practicing writing. She began publishing some of her short stories in literary journals when she was 22, using the pen name Osceola.
Some of these works were published after her death, including stories that were removed from earlier collections and essays she wrote for different events.