Bodil Bjarta Joensen ([pɔte̝l jœːnsn̩]; 25 September 1944 – 3 January 1985) was a Danish pornographic actress born in the village of Hundige, near Copenhagen.
An individual with a public profile for a time, with her own successful business, she failed to make the transition to more mainstream movies when market sentiment changed and she became impoverished and could no longer care for her animals.
The daughter of a devout Christian mother and an absentee military father, Joensen grew up in the Copenhagen suburb of Hundige.
[1] Turning to animals for affection, her dog became her best friend, companion and lover, and she wore a locket containing his picture for the rest of her life.
She later left to set up her own breeding farm, "Insemination Central", while Joensen became known for her ability to handle aggressive animals such as boars, and was then ruined by country gossip, spread principally by farmers' wives who were unhappy at the prospect of their husbands working with a young single girl on farm business.
She starred in a number of feature films and shorts for companies such as Color Climax Corporation, as well as for the pornographer Ole Ege, in which she and other actors had sex with various animal species.
In this genre, Joensen drew special attention worldwide as the Boar Girl, a reputation earned from her live performances with swine, as well as her participation in films shot with pigs on her own breeding centre.
The movies she appeared in combined a peculiar blend of the "tolerant contemporary Danish society" image and Scandinavian rustic nostalgia.
Her Danish biography comments of her domestic life: "The scene is classic Rabelaisian more than anything else, harkening back to the Middle Ages when people and their animals often did live in the same house.
"[2] The award-winning documentary Bodil Joensen - en sommerdag juli 1970 (1970), by Shinkichi Tajiri, shows her living with her animals on her farm during this era, including their care, her affection for them, and her sexual life, entirely to the tune of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (Pastoral)—an involuntary artistic choice that became necessary when the original soundtrack recordings became unavailable through an error.
"[2] The documentary was the surprising winner of the Grand Prize of the Wet Dream Film Festival, held in Amsterdam from 26–29 November 1970, where it premiered.
Joensen immediately became an underground celebrity, and drew attention from other documentary makers as well as tourists towards her expanding farm.
"[5] Joensen helped finance the farm by allowing sex tourists to visit it and make private films with her animals.
Friends comment about that time[1] that she was "easily exploited by almost anyone with a camera" and that the visitors "just wanted pornography; they didn't care about knowing her".
After 1972,[citation needed] she experienced a sharp deterioration, undergoing very obvious physical and psychological changes, including depression, first working as a "live show" and "sexual roleplay" girl.
By 1980, with little remaining means of income and spiralling debt, the only work she was able to retain was a hectic routine of small scale live shows most evenings.
Resorting to exchanging any sexual favour for alcohol and tranquilizers, she stated in her final interview that "in my position it is hard to turn down anything, no matter how disgusting ... for me, staying alive in the hooking business is hell".