I heard this story a long time ago, and I have retold it so many times I am starting to wonder if I made it up myself, but I know the core of it is true, and my mother, who first told it to me, will testify to that. It is a good story, so I will tell it again :
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In Denmark a hundred or so years ago lived a crazy woman. In today’s pathology she would probably have been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but in those days, she was just diagnosed as “crazy”.
She was deeply religious, and her delusions usually included visions of fornicating with angels and priests – one priest in particular, with whom she was in love and maintained a lifelong, platonic relationship. Nevertheless, she was burdened by these visions – she was haunted by them – and they wouldn’t leave her alone.
Even when placed out of her home by request of her family – who feared she would do harm to herself during her fits – and under the care and treatment of the foremost psychiatric hospital in Denmark at the time, her mental health declined.
During her episodes she would produce tapestries of a remarkable primitive originality, rudimentary renderings of angels, lambs, and biblical tableaus, but even her creative outlet did not seem to provide any relief from the incessant voices calling her, painting out all the lewdness in the world for her to see. It really bothered her.
It bothered her so much that she was not sure she could bear it anymore, and she spoke of this to her doctors and to her family when they would visit. She wished that her voices would have somewhere else to go instead of bothering her and she spoke of this to her doctors and her visitors.
Luckily for her, she was of a wealthy family who struck a deal to allow them to build a mansion on the hospital grounds for her voices, so they could leave the poor woman alone. The hospital board complied on the premise that the house would become hospital property upon the woman’s death.
The house was built and the woman lived happily to a ripe old age within the dormitories of the hospital; she never visited the house where her voices lived and as the voices never left the house, she was able in fact to get on with her life. A life that we might consider constrained, but a full and happy life it was.
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This fantastic story -- inspired by two real lives of Karoline Ebbesen and Palæmona von Treschow, who lived at the Sct. Hans Hospital in the late 19th through the early 20th -- indeed stayed with me. In recent years it resurfaced in the installation performance “A Space Where Your Voices Can Live” (2023) followed by the choir work “Lille Solstråle Sad Og Så På Månen” (2025)
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