Thorkild Bjørnvig

Who was Thorkild Bjørnvig?

Thorkild Strange Bjørnvig was a Danish author and poet. His 1955 collection of poems Anubis is a part of the Danish Culture Canon. He studied literature at the University of Copenhagen and his prize winning MA thesis was about Rainer Maria Rilke whose works he later translated into Danish. With Bjørn Poulsen he founded the literary journal Heretica as a reaction against the modernist and realist wave in Danish literature that had prevailed in the years before the War.

Among his poetry collections are Stjærnen bag Gavlen, Anubis, Figur og Ild, Ravnen Morgenmørke, Gennem regnbuen og Siv, vand og måne. He also published essays about Danish and international authors such as Frank Jæger, Sophus Claussen, Rilke and Edgar Allan Poe.

In a series of autobiographical books he described his complicated friendship with Karen Blixen from 1948 to 1955, his childhood and his time as a student during and after World War II.