Karen Blixen Museum

Karen Blixen Museum in Nairobi was once the centre pieces of a farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills owned by the Danish Author Karen and her Swedish Husband, Baron Bror von Blixen Fincke. It is located 10km from the city centre and belongs to a different time period in the history of Kenya. The farm house gained international fame with the release of the movie Out of Africa’ an Oscar Award winning film based on Karen’s autobiography by the same title.

Distant View of Karen Blixen

Karen also known by her pen name Isak Dinesen was born at Rungstedlund in Denmark on 17th of April 1885 as the second child of Wilhelm and Ingeborg Dinesen’s five children. She came to Africa in 1914 to marry her half cousin and carry out dairy farming in the then British Colony of Kenya. Her husband had however changed his mind and wanted to farm coffee. Her uncle Aage Westenholz financed the farm and members of both families were share holders.

The coffee farm did not do well, suffering various tragedies including factory fire and continuous bad harvest. After her divorce from and departure of her husband, Karen was left to run the financially troubled farm on her own, a daunting task for a woman of that generation. She fell in love with an English man, Denis Finch Hatton.  Unfortunately, his death in Tsavo in 1930 coupled with the failed farming left Karen little choice but to return to Denmark.  She turned to writing as a career following her departure from Africa and published to increasing acclaim such works as Seven Gothic Tales (1934) Out of Africa(1937) and Babette Feat (1950).  She died on her family estate, Rungsted, in 1962 at the age of 77.

The Making of Karen Blixen Museum

Karen Blixen called the house “Bogani” or “Mbogani” meaning a house in the woods and occupied it until 1931.  The house was sporadically occupied thereafter until purchased in 1964 by the Danish government and given to the Kenyan government as an independence gift. The Museum house remains a serene environment that seems to belong to the past, surrounded by a tranquil garden and indigenous forest, with a splendid view of Karen’s beloved Ngong Hills. She honours the hills with the phrase I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills’.

The Karen Blixen house meets three of the customary criteria for historical significance.

1. First, it is associated with the broad historical pattern of European settlement and cultivation of East Africa.
2. Second, it is associated with the life of a person significant to our past as the home of Baroness Karen Blixen from 1917 -1931.  As such, it served as the setting and basis of her well known book Out of Africa, written under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen and as a gathering place for other well known personalities of the period.
3. Third, the building embodies the distinctive characteristics of its type, period and method of construction.  The house’s architecture is typical of late 19th century bungalow architecture, including the spacious rooms, horizontal layout verandas, tile roof and stone construction typical of scores of residences built throughout European suburbs of Nairobi in early decades.

By 1985, with renewed interest in Karen Blixen occasioned by the film production of Out of Africa, an agreement was reached with the current owners running the venue as a collage for the house to become part of the National museums of Kenya. Many pieces of furniture that Karen Blixen sold to Lady McMillan on her departure were acquired back and constitute part of the exhibition in the Museum.

• Karen Blixen Museum is open daily to the Public  from 9.30 am to 6pm including weekends and public holidays.
• Guided tours are offered continuously.
• Additional features include a museum shop which offers handicrafts, posters and postcards, the Movie Out of Africa’, books and other Kenyan souvenirs.

Occasionally, the grounds are rented for wedding receptions, corporate functions and other social events.

Karen Blixen Museum is under the management of National museums of Kenya