A keen naturalist and great narrator, Jörgen Vilhelm Bergsöe was born in Copenhagen on 8th of February 1835. He got a degree in zoology and a strong scientific preparation.
He dedicated himself to the study of tarantulas, which he published, and to explore the story of tarantism. In his trip to Italy in 1867, he stopped in Rome, where he also met Ibsen, before going to the south and visit Naples. He did not stay long. His destination was Ischia, where he was addressed to by his Danish doctor. He was sure that Bergsoe would have benefitted from the thermal baths for the gout he was suffering from. Bergsoe, with his brother and his sister, landed in Casamicciola on 3rd of May, where he found accommodation at la Piccola Sentinella.
On the island he met a donkey driver, Francesco Mattera, who became his guide during the continuous excursions he was doing every day, as a naturalist, among the Ischitan green hills. Few weeks later, Ibsen arrived, who he became friend with in Rome. The Norwegian playwright, who would have been the protagonist of his Ibsen in Ischia, advised him to write a comedy set on the island, which saw the light that summer with the title “A night in Ischia”. The walks in the most unknown and wild places of the island with the donkey driver fantasies inspired then the Danish with two stories: The Singing Stone and The Lucky Family, published in 1874 in the Novelle Italiane. The Ischitan stay continued until 24th of august, when the Bergsöe left Ischia to Salerno.
Author of other books set in Rome, the Danish zoologist died in Copenhagen on 26th of June 1911.
