Since her breakthrough in the 1970s, Bodil Bredsdorff (b. 1951) has asserted herself as the portrayer of the modern child’s life. In her work, Denmark’s
status as a country dominated by agriculture and small provincial towns is a thing of the past. It is, for better or for worse, the lives of children living in towns
- in broken families, in a disintegrating pattern of gender roles, in everyday exchanges between lone fathers and lone mothers - that are at the centre of the stories. Always caught in a single, dramatised double grip in which both
children and adults stand as hostages to the demands of modern work which neither is able to keep together.
The affection they have for each other constantly results in friction when tiredness and trivial accidentsgain the upper hand. Typical is the picture book Der hvor Linda bor (Where Linda Lives)(1975), in which Linda is the last to be fetched from nursery school, and where
the weary hours between 5 and 7 o’clock go wrong because the tiny messy incidents - the water slopping over from the washbasin, the mug of milk accidentally overturned - become the last straw for the mother and cause Linda’s tears and anger to erupt.
Der hvor Linda bor and its successors turned into a major work of social realism. A piece of congenial team work between Bodil Bredsdorff and her illustrator Lilian Brøgger. A solid document of the time. The books turn the conflicts into themes at the same time as searching for new syntheses: love, mutual respect, equality of age and
sex. In this area where children and adults collide with each other, it is the frustrations and aspirations of the adults that provide the shape and the explanations, while the children’s tears, anger and protests fade into the
background.
So it is in Marias mor bor alene (Maria's Mum Lives Alone) (1977), where Maria is on a weekend visit to her mother. The entire story is about a mother who has broken out of her marriage in order to take a training and thus ensure a better life for herself:
We are in the decade of women’s liberation. Women can do things - and they can do things for themselves. In simple but strong terms, the picture book depicts a faith in women’s rights. In Vinnies vindueskarm (Winnie’s Windowsill) (1975) the urban child’s lacking experience of nature and animals is compensated
through an imaginative play landscape on a windowsill.
In the children’s literature of the 1970s, faith in the power of planations to create cohesion creates form - also with Bodil Bredsdorff. Within the overall oeuvre, two small books stand out as small foretastes of the
change that was to occur in the 1990s. One is a book for reading aloud, Johanne (Johanne) (1978). The other is the photo book Sofies Søstre (Sophie’s
Sisters) (1981). In the story about the old woman Johanne, who is now in a rest home, the main character’s point of view is retained, and old age
becomes a mirror also for modern children. In Sofies Søstre, where three sisters each embark on a dangerous, crazy course, the actual composition creates freedom and significance. In these two works, the artistic breakthrough
is about to take place. The adult with a constant need to explain herself is silent, and the child’s own approach to experiences is growing in importance.
With the series of novels entitled Børnene i Kragevig (The Children in Crow Creek) (1993-95), Bodil Bredsdorff’s writing undergoes a transformation.
All modern life’s conflicts between adults and children, between life’s dreams
and the real economy, are resolved in a brilliant composition in which children
from broken homes dominate both the narrative point of view, the emotions and
the dreams. Bodil Bredsdorff’s language unfolds simply and sensitively and
plays a central role in creating character.
The series closes with an understanding that although life and death, nature and culture are constantly crossing swords, it is the effort made here and now by the single individual that gives the infinite chain of life and
death meaning. No life is too small, no effort too meagre. The Children in Crow Creek represents the artistic pinnacle of Bodil Bredsdorff’s work. A simple, but brilliantly sensed and composed series of novels, which constantly reflect the adult and the child in each
other. Seen in the context of the oeuvre as a whole, they gather together and release the themes that have been the driving force in Bodil Bredsdorff’s work
since the 1970s. A major writer is on the way!
