Muse of artists, writer, polyglot, translator, pianist and salon-goer. One of the most famous femme fatale of her era. Fate particularly tied her to Poland, even though she was Norwegian and buried in Georgia.

Dagny Juell was born on 8 June 1867 in the idyllic town of Kongsvinger, about 50 km east of Kristiania, as the capital of Norway was then called (today's Oslo). Her father was a doctor and her mother, a steadfast housewife, was the sister of Otto Blehr, who later became twice Prime Minister of Norway. Dagny had three siblings: the youngest sister Ragnhild became a well-known opera singer. The middle sister, sources recall, 'had some sort of handicap', did not marry and stayed with her mother. Gudrun, the eldest, married a member of the Swedish parliament and it was to her that the role of adoptive mother for Dagny's tragically orphaned children would fall.

Dagny's thorough classical education was supplemented by studies at the music academy in Erfurt. Around 1890, as a 23-year-old, she returned to Kristiania for further studies. Educated, intelligent, piano-playing, endowed with phenomenal beauty and a kind of magnetism, she quickly became the muse of artistic salons. She then became involved with Norway's most famous painter, Edvard Munch, whose work will be strongly marked by this acquaintance.

Dagny Juell and Berlin bohemia
In 1892, she followed him to Berlin, where she found herself at the centre of the artistic bohemia centred around the wine bar 'Zum Schwarzen Ferkel' ('Under the Black Piglet'). A plethora of fin de siècle artists met there regularly, including the Swedish writer and playwright August Strindberg, who had a brief and tempestuous affair with Dagny.

In Berlin bohemian circles, Dagny also met Stanislaw Przybyszewski (1868-1927), a friend of Strindberg and Munch, who came from Kujawy and called him a "brilliant Pole". Fascinated by Nietzsche, the nihilist, uncompromising writer and scandalist lived in Berlin, where he tried to break through with his radical philosophy by working as a piano teacher for a living.

The relationship between Dagny Juell and Stanislaw Przybyszewski
Przybyszewski, known as Stache or Przybysz, was at the time in an informal relationship with Marta Foerder, his former pupil, with whom he had two children. "Inconspicuous and almost stouter, she nevertheless had the charm and affection proper to an ugly woman," wrote Przybyszewski's biographer, Henryk Izydor Rogacki, about Marta.

When the phenomenal Dagny appeared in Przybyszewski's entourage, the charismatic Pole did not stop at seducing the Norwegian - they married in 1893. They had two children: a son Zenon (b. 1895 ) and a daughter Ivi (b. 1897). This relationship strongly influenced the work of Edward Mucha, who, as it were, predicted the fate of the woman: "I am convinced that one day she will go to Poland with him, get entangled in a nihilist conspiracy and hang on the noose together or go into exile. It is possible, however, that he will die sooner for lack of livelihood."

The relationship with Juel (Dagny changed her surname from Juell) did not prevent Przybyszewski from conceiving further children with Marta Foerder, who - while pregnant with him for the fourth time - committed suicide in 1898. The fate of the children from this union did not interest the writer.

Dagny and Stanisław Przybyszewski in Kraków
. Przybyszewski and Juel, known in Polish bohemian circles as Stachu and Ducha, formed a spectacular pair of Berlin and Krakow bohemians. Close companions for joint debates and feasts from the Young Poland milieu included: Stanisław Wyspiański (he created a portrait of Dagny) or Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, who taught Przybyszewska to play billiards in Krakow. This was something of a sensation, as the game was reserved for men.

Dagny's charm worked on everyone - she was called the 'muse from the land of the fjords'. However, she was not just an adornment of bohemian salons. She left behind poetry, prose and several plays. Her drama Sin was staged in Prague, The Raven's Nest premiered at the City Theatre in Krakow after her death in 1902. Juel's work often featured themes of fate, of a tragic fate from which it is impossible to escape.

Scandinavian-Polish bohemian romance
However, it was not enough for Przybyszewski. While with Dagny, he fell into an affair with the painter Aniela Pająkówna (with whom he had a daughter Stanisława, born in 1901), then in 1899 in Lvov he seduced the wife of the poet Jan Kasprowicz, Jadwiga, who abandoned her family for him.

Dagny left her husband in 1900, remaining in a complicated relationship with Munch. Stanislaw wrote: "I have rarely shared such a close spiritual affinity with any artist as with Edvard Munch. They all formed a confusing love polygon of Scandinavian-Polish bohemia. This included the son of Polish industrialists, owners of mines in the Caucasus, only 21-year-old Władysław Emeryk, who was in love with a Norwegian woman.

Tragic death of Dagna Juel-Przybyszewska
Sources disagree as to whether Przybyszewski inspired Dagna's final trip to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), where they were to meet at Emeryk's house and allegedly reconcile. There is a theory that he deliberately pushed his wife into the arms of a younger lover in order to get away from her. Ultimately, Stach never made it to Georgia.

The last act of the drama took place on 5 June 1901 at the Grand Hotel in Tiflis, where Emeryk, Juel-Przybyszewska and her less than six-year-old son Zenon were staying. Wladislaw led the child into an adjoining room, returned to Dagny and shot her sitting in an armchair with a shot to the back of the head. He then committed suicide himself.

The killer had previously crossed out a few words to Zenon: "I'm taking Mother away from you (...). Maybe your life will be broken by this. I cannot otherwise, I cannot for Her sake"; and to Przybyszewski: "Dear Stach! What can I tell you! (...) I have done what you should have done. (...). She wanted to write to you that she knew I would kill her, that she considered it a necessity and the only way out, and that she loved you always and loves you always. Because you were the only one she loved all her life. Know that I worship you, that I idolise you, that I love you. I know, however, that you curse me and that is my despair".

Przybyszewski wrote (deceitfully) to Jadwiga Kasprowicz: "Ituchna the sweetest, Mrs Dagny took her life together with Emeryk. Read the 'Kurier Warszawski' of 5 or 6 June and you will see that it is true. I love you, I'm going, I'll take Zenon with me - and I'm coming back.".

He never went for the child. The offspring of Stach and Duchy ultimately had no significant ties to Poland. The children were adopted by Dagna's aforementioned older sister Gudrun and lived in Sweden. Daughter Ivi did, however, meet her father in Danzig in 1923 and attended his funeral in 1927. She also maintained contact with her half-sister Stanisława, daughter of the painter Aniela Pająkówna.

Tomb of Dagna Juel-Przybyszewska in Tbilisi
. Dagna Juel-Przybyszewska's grave in the oldest necropolis in the Georgian capital is often visited. Entering the main gate of the Kukijskiy cemetery, turn left into the first alley. The Norwegian woman is buried between a fence and a small fence.

The black granite gravestone bears an inscription in Georgian and Polish. The inscription reads: "Dagny Juell Przybyszewska 1867-1901". Underneath it is a text in Georgian, below it again in Polish: "Dagny Przybyszewska died in Tbilisi in 1901". Around the grave are candles, flowers and Polish and Norwegian flags.

The grave was moved from its original location through the efforts of the cemetery's director, Arkadi Czowelidze, who coordinated the exhumation with the Norwegian Embassy and was in correspondence contact with Queen Sonia of Norway and Dagny's grandson, Ivy's son Rutger Bennet. The corpse was exhumed to a new grave near the main gate on 13 June 1999.

However, the original gravestone of Dagna Juel-Przybyszewska has been preserved to this day on the so-called Polish Hill, where there are still more than 90 Polish graves. The tombstone has the form of a cuboidal marble slab. On top of it is a cross of green marble with an inscription in Polish and Norwegian below it: //Dagny Przybyszewska / died in Tiflis / on 23 [May] 1901 / aged 33//.

Dagny Juel Norwegian Women's Museum
. Dagny's family home in Kongsvinger now houses the Women's Museum dedicated to the struggle for emancipation. The patron of the institution is Dagna Juel. As the weekly magazine Polityka wrote in 2017: "Older people in Kongsvinger still remember that she had a reputation for being a light-hearted woman," says Mona Holm of the Women's Museum. - Some even thought that the villa should be demolished so that it would not remind them of her. Today, in the cemetery at the Vinger Kirke church, where Dagny was baptised and confirmed, the obelisk on the Juells' grave is deteriorating."