Danish pastor, poet, historian and philosopher (1783-1872), regarded as the founder of the folk high school movement [IC].
Contribution
Grundtvig called for popular education for farmers and the lower classes, conducted through conversation, which he called “the living word,” and free of examinations and diplomas. He set out ideas more than rules, and others built the schools: the first opened at Rødding in 1844, and Christen Kold widened the movement to poorer rural students [IC]. The schools spread to Norway, Sweden and Finland, and later inspired Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk School in the United States [IC]. Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Björkman argue that this movement carried the Nordic countries into modern democracy; the wiki’s Bildung page treats it as the best-documented case of formation organized for a whole population, and the folk high school as a model for the bioregional learning center.
Related pages
Sources
- Andersen, L. R. and Björkman, T. (2017). The Nordic Secret
Provenance
Created 30 October 2026 with the Bildung pages, from the public record on the folk high school movement.