With her bestseller, The Butterfly Season, published in English this month, Danish journalist and author Lea Korsgaard tells Scan Magazine how a seemingly quirky ambition to see all 64 of Denmark’s butterfly species became an existential journey through nature, death and life.

From Aristotle’s foundational observations of the living world, through the 17th-century Dutch microscopist Jan Swammerdam’s unsettling discoveries about metamorphosis, to the butterfly obsession of Victorian-era collector Margaret Fountaine – whose vast collection of 22,000 specimens invites its own psychological analysis – The Butterfly Season is a tour de force. Not only of Lea Korsgaard’s superb writing, but also of the mind-blowing work carried out by a wildly diverse cast of humans, all trying to understand, categorise and document one of our most intriguing fellow inhabitants on planet Earth: the butterfly.

Photo: Robin Skjoldborg

Photo: Robin Skjoldborg

In Denmark, the book has drawn rave reviews, with publishing rights sold to 18 countries. For Korsgaard herself, however, the book began less as a writing project than as a way to legitimise what some might call an odd idea: to see all of Denmark’s butterfly species in a single season. Asked whether she knew from the start that the project would become a book, she replies: “No, the longing came before the idea of the book.”

Lea Korsgaard on chasing butterflies and learning the language of nature

“Really, it was an idea I ended up taking seriously simply because, on some level, I had to,” she explains. “But I used the idea of a book – or a podcast series, or whatever it might become – more as an excuse. Fairly quickly, I began saying to people: well, maybe it will end up as a book one day, and perhaps it could become a podcast too. That made it easier to reach out to the experts who helped me along the way.”

As the author of five books and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Zetland, a Danish digital newspaper known for its in-depth, engaging journalism, Korsgaard is used to turning complex subjects into compelling narratives. In this book, however, one might say she does the opposite – she takes what first appears to be a simple, quirky story about a woman hunting butterflies in the Danish landscape and turns it into a profound reflection on humanity’s relationship with nature.

Lea Korsgaard on chasing butterflies and learning the language of nature

From orgasms to butterflies

 Despite her leading role in Danish media, Korsgaard knew she wanted to become a writer long before the idea of studying journalism occurred to her. “Writing in that kind of long, continuous, scenic manner is simply one of the things I love most,” she explains.

In fact, the route to journalism was not one she had planned, but calling the training the best tool in the world, she stresses it is one she is very grateful she ended up taking. Impressively, alongside her work and family life, she has found time to write or co-write no less than five books, including Orgasmeland, a book on the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich’s years in Denmark and the Sexpol group, as well as a biography of Danish actress Ghita Nørreby and a journalistic reconstruction of a mysterious Danish book theft.

When asked how The Butterfly Season fits into her seemingly eclectic authorship, Korsgaard answers without hesitating: “I definitely feel that this is the book I have written most from the heart, and I see all my other books as a kind of preparation within a specific subgenre, leading up to this one.”

While taking the reader through her personal journey in search of Danish butterflies, The Butterfly Season also sees Korsgaard use her journalistic instincts to full effect. Alongside engaging portraits of past and present lepidopterists, Korsgaard’s investigations take her from gardens on Bornholm to a French field and a police station in Aalborg. There are stories of sexual frustrations channelled into butterfly collections, reflections on the minute scale of humanity and Earth, and, through it all, a subtle meditation on the relationship between humans and nature.

Speaking the language of nature

As the season unfolds, that meditation deepens. Drawing on writers, scientists and thinkers who have tried to understand the living world before her, Korsgaard begins to ask larger questions about what it means to be alive, and what it means to belong to nature rather than simply move through it.

Yet the book’s most profound insights do not come from the literature she encounters, but from nature itself. At Råbjerg Mose in North Jutland, nature demonstrates that its splendour is not found only in the grand landscapes that immediately take our breath away. “It looked completely ordinary,” she recalls. “There were trees, grass, a field, and everything was green. I remember thinking: I have driven all the way to North Jutland, and this looks like something I could have seen at home in North Zealand.”

But as she began moving down among the grasses, the landscape changed. Or rather, her way of seeing it did. The green was no longer simply green, but full of shades, textures and hidden colour. Leaves appeared sticky, smooth, knobbly or serrated. Beetles and flowers emerged from what had first seemed an unremarkable field. “For me, it became a realisation of what it actually means to see,” she says. “Not just to look with the ordinary gaze we walk around with, almost in a fog, but to have the words for what we are part of and really focus our attention on it. Then it appears so clearly and so wonderfully.”

That experience became one of several turning points in the book, moving Korsgaard towards a stronger feeling of connection with the living world. The book, she says, is not written with one intended reading, but for her it describes a longing “to learn to speak the language of nature” – and through that language, to understand what humans are part of and therefore responsible for.

“I don’t think we can take responsibility for nature on an abstract level,” she says. “We have to enter into the very concrete nature we are part of, to feel the deep joy of being allowed to belong to it – and, hopefully, a deep sense of responsibility towards it.”

Follow your passion

 Even if Korsgaard says the book does not have a single meaning, The Butterfly Season leaves the reader with a lasting sense that something great can be found in the seemingly ordinary – and that giving serious attention to what draws us can have profound consequences. Asked how she found time for the project alongside her work as editor-in-chief of Zetland, her role as chair of the board of the Danish School of Media and Journalism, and family life with three boys, then aged nine, 11 and 12, Korsgaard answers: “I think you have to commit to your passions. It is absolutely crucial for your life energy that you follow the current moving through your body and sending you in one direction or another. Whether that means getting out into nature, building kites, starting winter bathing – whatever it is, you have to go.”

For some readers, that current could well lead straight to butterflies. With the success of her book, Korsgaard may inspire many to follow in her footsteps – though fortunately for the butterflies, the collectors of our age tend to carry lenses rather than nets. Since publication, she says, hundreds of readers have already emailed her their own butterfly photographs.

The Butterfly Season ‒ On Beginnings, Endings, and the Life in Between arrives in bookshops on 11 June.

Lea Korsgaard on chasing butterflies and learning the language of nature

The Butterfly Season ‒ On Beginnings, Endings, and the Life in Between arrives in bookshops on 11 June.

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