The Jutland Heath as a Literary Place of Inheritance: Hans Christian Andersen, St. St. Blicher, Jeppe Aakjær

Abstract

For centuries, the Jutland peninsula in Denmark was covered by heathland. From the end of the eighteenth century, the heath and its few residents were described to the middle classes in Copenhagen as ’Denmark’s wilderness’. The heath was considered a picturesque contrast to the cities. This intensified as industrialisation gained a foothold in Copenhagen, Odense etc. Artists, genre painters and authors created the picture of an authentic and strange wilderness with immense wilds, strange inhabitants and magnificent nature. During the nineteenth century, writers like Hans Christian Andersen and Steen Steensen Blicher created the picture of the heath as an exotic, wonderful and wild place. Thus these artists created a literary place of inheritance, a special landscape that was considered by the Danes to mirror the soul of the people. From the mid-nineteenth century, the effective farming started cultivating the heath and from 1870, this was intensified by the Society for Heathland Reclamation. Consequently the image of the heath as an authentic and inalienable place crystallised, precisely because it was being lost. A number of poets and artists, for example Jeppe Aakjær, sided with the heath. They defended the remaining parts of the heath and made it what it is today. This article examines a number of texts that were central to the construction of the heath as literary place of inheritance.