page_title: Elvira Madigan
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Elvira Madigan / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for Ciniselli's circus, Saint-Petersburg 23. april 1879; advertising Elvira Madigan's (=Hedwig) first performance as a funambulist.
context_page_description: Elvira Madigan, artist name for Hedvig Antoinette Isabella Eleonore Jensen, was a circus performer.
  Elvira Madigan is today known for her relationship with the Swedish nobleman and cavalry officer Sixten Sparre. Their joint death caused great sensation and the event was described in song by among others the author Johan Lindström Saxon in a song beginning "Sad things happen", which gained great popularity.
context_section_description: Elvira Madigan is often said to be Danish, but uncertainty still prevails over which should be considered her home country and about her citizenship. Her mother was a circus artist born in Finland but of Norwegian ancestry, Eleonora Cecilie Christine Marie Olsen. She was later known as Laura Madigan (1849–1918) but during Elvira's childhood she mostly used the stage name Miss Ulbinska. The father was circus artist Frederik Peter Jensen, born in 1845 in Copenhagen. His later destiny is unknown. At the time of Elvira Madigan's birth, her parents were not married to each other, and they toured with the French circus director Didier Gautier's "Cirque du Nord" in Germany and Denmark. During the years 1869–1872 Elvira's mother toured with Circus Renz in Germany and Austria, where she in 1871 gave birth to Elvira's half-brother Richard Heinrich Olsen in Berlin. He later toured with the stage name Oscar Madigan. The father of this child is unknown. In 1875, Elvira's mother worked at Circus Myers in Austria, where she got to know the American circus artist John Madigan, whom she subsequently lived with. The following year Elvira Madigan, then still Hedvig Jensen, made her debut in the circus, when she rode a pas-de-deux with John Madigan during a performance with the circus Loisset in  Tivoli in Copenhagen . After the death of Loisset in Norrköping the following year, his circus was dissolved, and the Madigan family moved to Circus Ciniselli in Russia. There Elvira Madigan trained to be a slack line dancer.
caption: The poster from Elvira Madigan's debut as a slack line dancer in St. Petersburg on April 23, 1879.
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