[1] Bjørnvig studied literature at the University of Aarhus and his prize winning MA thesis (1947) was about Rainer Maria Rilke, whose works he later translated into Danish.
With Bjørn Poulsen he founded the literary journal Heretica, as a reaction against the modernist and realist wave in Danish literature, that had prevailed in the years before the Second World War.
[2] Heretica was largely inspired by the British periodical The Criterion by T. S. Eliot and was published from 1948–1953, promoting writers such as Frank Jæger, Jørgen Gustava Brandt, Benny Andersen and Per Højholt.
He also published essays about Danish and international authors such as Frank Jæger, Sophus Claussen, Rilke and Edgar Allan Poe.
[1] In a series of autobiographical books, he described his complicated friendship with Karen Blixen from 1948 to 1955 (Pagten, 1974), his childhood (Solens have og skolegården, 1983; Hjørnestuen og månehavet, 1984) and his time as a student during and after World War II (Jordens hjerte, 1986; Ønsket, 1987).