Her beloved African servants and friends, whose portraits, painted by Dinesen, line the walls of the first two rooms visitors see at Rungstedlund, were only memories. She was 46 and ruined when she returned to Denmark from Kenya in 1931 to live with her elderly mother at Rungstedlund, an ivy-covered house overlooking the sound that separates Denmark from Sweden. But to find out what happened to her after she lost the coffee plantation to creditors and after Finch Hatton died in a plane crash, you must visit Rungstedlund, where she was born in 1885 and died, a writer of international renown, in 1962. The tile-roofed farmhouse where she lived, about 10 miles southwest of Nairobi, is now a museum, with some of her furniture, landscaped gardens and the same view of the Ngong Hills she enjoyed. Those who have read “Out of Africa” or have seen the 1985 movie version of the book, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, know that Dinesen went to East Africa in 1914 and stayed 17 years, managing the farm after her marriage to Swedish Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke unraveled and eventually falling in love with English safari guide Denys Finch Hatton. For Dinesen, it was the Kenyan coffee plantation in the lee of the Ngong Hills that she made famous in her memoir, “Out of Africa,” and, in her later life, a modest manor house called Rungstedlund about 30 miles north of Copenhagen.
That’s why I am always moved by the stories of people like Danish author Isak Dinesen who grow passionately attached to a place. They care about the English Lake District the way others care about food or sports. Dedicated travelers often have a strong love of place.
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