Bodil Katharine Biørn

Protestant missionaries from the United States had been serving as doctors, nurses and teachers to the Armenian communities in the Anatolian (Asia Minor) region of the Ottoman Empire since the first half of the nineteenth century.  In the 1890s, as news of the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in Anatolia outraged the world, Christian congregations and church organizations in Europe began reaching out to Armenians in Turkey. 

In 1900, a Danish woman, Emsy Collet, founded the Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere, or Women Missionary Workers (WMW), in Copenhagen.  The WMW sent missionaries to Western Armenia in Anatolia. Of all the missionary organizations operating in the region, the WMW was the smallest and the only one consisting exclusively of women. Bodil Biorn was the only Norwegian of the twenty-two women sent to Western Armenia by the organization. 

Shortly after her arrival, Biørn was sent to Mezereh, where she worked with Danish and German missionaries, spending one year learning Armenian (she would eventually speak Armenian, Turkish and Arabic, along with German, English and her native Norwegian) and working as a nurse at the German Orphanage.  Two years later, against the advice of her German and American colleagues in Mezereh, Biørn requested a transfer to Mûs, eight days away from Mezereh by horseback.  She had heard about all the desperately poor and sick inhabitants in the area who were without medical assistance; there were only two doctors (a military doctor and a district physician, both Turks) for the population of hundreds of villages surrounding Mûs, and only two other Protestant missionaries.  She described the nine years she spent there as her “longest and most trying time,” during which she would function as a nurse, doctor, midwife, orphanage director and teacher—as well as providing health training to young Armenians who worked as her assistants.

When Biørn returned to Norway in 1917 after a harrowing escape from Anatolia, she brought with her a two-year-old Armenian boy whom she said she had adopted in Mûs. Biørn said little else about the matter, but rumors began that the boy, who had fair skin and blue eyes, was Biørn’s biological son rather than an adopted son.

In 2004, Biørn’s grandson, Jussi Flemming Biørn, hired a producer and director and began making a film about his grandmother.  The film, “They Called Me Mother,” tells the story of grandmother’s work in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere and of his effort to ascertain his father’s origins—a quest that reached no definitive conclusions. 

The Biørn family home is now the Kragerø City Hall.  Outside this building is a monument to Biørn, made in Aleppo, Syria, and presented as a gift from the Armenian community there.

1871 (January 27) Born in Kragerø, Norway

1896 Experiences a personal religious conversion; trains as a nurse at the Deaconess House in Oslo. 

1903 Comes into contact with the Women Missionary Workers organization, where she learns about the needs of Armenians in Anatolia

1905 Sent to the Ottoman Empire as a missionary nurse

1907 Arrives in Mûs, located on a plain almost 5,000 above sea level in an isolated mountainous region; the population of 50,000 is half Christian (Armenian), half Muslim (Turks and Kurds), with roughly 300 surrounding Armenian-majority villages

1917 Forced to flee the Ottoman Empire; returns to Norway

1922 Opens Lusaghbyur (“Light Source”) orphanage in Alexandrapol, Soviet Armenia; when the orphanage is closed by authorities in 1924, continues her work with refugees in Aleppo, Syria.

1935 Returns to Norway

1960 (July 22) Dies in Oslo

 “Bodil Biørn.” The National Photo Archive. The National Archives of Norway, https://foto.digitalarkivet.no/fotoweb/archives/5003-Historiske%20foto/?q=Bodil%20Bi%C3%B8rn.

“Bodil Biørn (1871-1960).” The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute: National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/online_exhibition_4.php.

Okkenhaug, Inger Marie.  “Women on a Mission! Scandinavian Welfare and the Armeniansin the Ottoman Empire, 1905-1917.”  Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East.  Eds. Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug.  Leiden, The Netherlands: BRILL, 2007. 57-82.

“The Story of Bodil Biørn.” Arkivverket Riksarkivet, http://www.arkivverket.no/webfelles/armenia/bodil.html.

They Call Me Mother. Java Films, 2006-7. Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theycallmemother.