Chapter 3: Sweden

And the Sun Rises with the Farmer

(Og solen står med bonden op)
The Philosophical History of the Nordic Folkhighschool

• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Denmark
• Chapter 2: Norway
• Chapter 3: Sweden
• Epilogue

CHAPTER THREE: SWEDEN

PROLOGUE

“The small patriotism, which we can still find among our Swedish folk, has been of the old sort, [stemming] from the national pride of the 1600’s . On the other hand, our people have completely missed what was meant by “national awakening” in the 1800’s. That instinctive popular struggle to express one’s innermost character in every circumstance of life, has been something unknown to us.”
Gustav Sundbärg: The Swedish Folk Temperament, 1911.

‘The Power of dreams in a people who once were great”
(Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, 1899)

In Denmark, one is particularly aware that the folkhighschool’s most charac-teristic effect has been, and continues to be, its rebellion against what Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson called “the establishment”. A protest directed against an elite culture in Denmark, of foreign origin. It was unattainable by the common people, reserved for a small minority which as a result were guaranteed all privileges. This cultural as well as political protest, which in Norway was even more violent than in Denmark, was wi doubtless disapproved, or more likely inconceivable in Sweden.

Sweden’s historical backround is so different from that of its neighboring countries, that this fact, in my opinion, must explain why the Swedish folkhighschool right from the beginning was marked, if not by its opposition, at least by its dissimilarity from the Danish model.

The current explanation for the founding of folkhighschools in Sweden is the district associations in 1862 and the reform of representation in 1866, when the organization of Riksdagen [the parliament] was changed from four classes to two chambers. The peasants, through these reforms, obtained so much responsibility in all aspects of society, that a better understanding of citizenship was needed. This argument can of course not be completely denied, it is above all valid in explaining why the peasants turned to the folkhighschools. It hardly explains, however, why the first folkhighslchool principals, who were academicians as in Denmark and Norway – thus not theologians – often resigned from extraordinary career possibilities, to settle down in the peasant milieu, under unbelievably difficult conditions, handicapped by isolation and often by aggressive hostility.

What motivated these academicians to make such a difficult choice? They did not belong to a movement which supported their engagement, as in Denmark,and they were not, as in Norway, active opponents, struggling to win back what today we call national identity. Nevertheless, these men too were seized by the burning Nordic enthusiasm, which permeated the whole 19th century.

In an essay collection, the Scånian author Ola Hansson (1860-1925) revives the memory of the previous generation, the men of the 1870’s: “The best, and the most representative of them were shaped by what was then called ‘the New Nordic Renaissance’; they wanted to create an independent Scandinavian culture, they studied Icelandic and founded folkhighschools.”

So why did they reject the Danish and Norwegian model for an educational institution, which in those neighboring countries were in the front ranks of the battle for what Ola Hansson calls “an independent Scandinavian culture”? In my opinion, we must look for the answer in the fact that in Sweden, “to return to oneself” – to use an often quoted expression of Erik Gustaf Geijer – it wasn’t possible to free oneself from such strong traditions that Bjørnson, even in 1899, expressed them in the phrase “the power of dreams in a folk that once were great”. [Erik Gustav Geijer (1783-1847) in his Collected Works I, declares that it is unprofitable to try to return to old ways of thinking, but at the same time he maintains that a people, like an individual, cannot develop unless they absorb the former times. "There is a ‘return’ that is ... both legal and useful - that is ‘a return to oneself.’" Geijer’s lectures in history at Uppsala University, his poetry, and his noticeable political change from conservatism to liberalism gave him a position in the Sweden of his time which has been compared with Grundtvig’s in Denmark.]

The Nordic Renaissance developed in Sweden during the 1870’s, that is, somewhat later than in the other countries. It is somewhat surprising to discover in this movement an echo of Swedish national feeling’s two fundamental components: the Gothic myth and enthusiasm for the hereditary peasant.

These notions of history, which today we smile at, did not seem so remarkable at the time when they were being worked out. What gives them a special character is that they have played a role as compensation myths. In this quality, they have survived oblivion.

De omnibus Gothorum Sveonumque regibus – that is, The history of all the Gothic and Swedish kings is the name of the monumental work that the last Swedish Catholic archbishop, Johannes Magnus, prepared during his exile in Rome. It was published there in 1554 and served as the official state ideology in Sweden from the time of Gustav Vasa’s son’s rule until the death of Charles XII (1560-1718). It has been said of this “Gothic Iliad” that “no book by a Swedish author (has) exercised a greater influence upon our country’s imaginative life and fate than this exiled patriot’s historical work, in later times [so] severely judged” (Johan Nordstrøm – The Island of the Foreignborn Ones, 1930).

National pride, in that century which in Sweden is unapologetically called “the time of great power” (1611-1718), complemented the Gothic myth, which stood parallel with the Swedish successes on the political plane. “The Lion of the North”, Gustav II Adolf, had led Swedish armies from victory to victory during the Thirty Years War. Sweden had raised itself to the rank of a great power, the country sought an earlier history worthy of this new honor. Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie founded the Antiquities College in 1666, to support research about Sweden’s past. Scholars of that time – Bureus, Stiernhielm, Verelius – competed eagerly to prove that the island Elixoia, which in ancient times was inhabited by “the Hyperboreans”, was none other than Scania, Scandinavia. When this conclusion was reached and became recognized everywhere, according to the learning of that time, a new step forward was taken. Through continued research in antique texts, it was imagined possible to prove that Apollo, born in the country of the Hyperboreans, returned there every ninth year and took up residence in a stately temple, which couldn’t be anything but the sacred area in Uppsala. From this place, he [is said to have] sent a messenger named Abaris to the Greeks, to indoctrinate this folk in Hyperborean temple mysteries. We are far from the Grundtvigian vision – a construction of which the mainly founded on the Bible, with one wing built in Greece while the other came from the North! Swedish pride wavered up and down on these cultural currents, a Sweden which had been despised by the scholars of the Renaissance now declared itself to be the cradle of culture. Greece had received its culture from the Hyperboreans. What a revenge for the land where Descartes [complained that he] had perished from the cold!

These ideas were topped off by the famous Olof Rudbeck , whose influence can still be recognized in Uppsala’s city seal. He tried to prove in four volumes, with the support of Plato’s great work Atlantis that the legendary island Atlantis, combined with Elixoia, was Sweden. The first volume was published in 1679. Rudbeck’s work was known and valued outside of the country. A well-known French newspaper of that time contained a review in 1685, formulating only one critical comment: In France it wasn’t possible to accept that also the Gauls came from Sweden!

We recognize with amazement that what from our height can only be con-sidered a compensation myth, in Louis XIV’s century agreed with what was accepted and expected as history.

With Charles XII, enthusiasm for the dispersed Goths – Gothi ex Patria – came to an end. But during the 1700’s, Swedish national feeling could find nourishment from other sources. Hadn’t the French philosopher Montesquieu declared in 1748, in The Spirit of Law that freedom was born in the North? And what did Rousseau say in his famous answer to the question: “Has progress in science and art resulted in improved morals?” Didn’t he praise the moral values of primitive men, insofar as civilization had not destroyed them?

This[primitive] man was to be discovered in the hereditary peasant, the Swedish peasant, who was a free man, owner of his land and represented in the Riksdag. Those who were filled with ideas of Freedom and Gustavian Sweden, enlightenment and refined French culture, began to sing the praises of “the hereditary peasant”:

“Thou, Sweden, thou, the honored country,
The freedom the countryman found with thee
With thee alone the Citizen,
Slave in almost every country:
At the prince’s throne, at the statesman’s table,
He often determined the fate of the realm;
The law he obeys is one he created,
The earth he plows is his own earth.”
-N. L. Sjöberg: The Peasant, Stockholm, 1791

During the 1800’s, the principle of nationality was developed everywhere in Europe: Should Denmark, Norway and Sweden meet this century in the same spirit? Should Sweden be able to leave aside its ancient dreams and the “return to itself” praised by Geiger, and unite with Denmark and Norway in a “return” which also contained an element of “agitation”, a protest against a society which carries privileges for some and excludes others? The hereditary peasant who – only in Sweden – had established a political structure, the district league, which rejected interference from the higher classes – should he, as in Denmark and Norway, unite with radical forces and take part in the storming of Bjørnson’s “establishment”?

Obviously, nothing came of this. Since nobody in Sweden took up the idea of shouting that “the sun rises with the farmer, not at all with the scholars” [One of the most famous of Grundtvig’s quotations, and the title of this book]- in other words that therefore no “culture-war” existed – I believe it has always been difficult in Sweden, yes practically impossible, to understand the cultural and political dimen-sions of those struggles with which the folkhighschool in the other countries came to be involved.

Contacts with Grundtvigian ideas and with the battle for independence in Norway became distorted and led to misunderstanding, something which was caused partly by ignorance and partly by an inability to understand because of a quite different spiritual climate.

Of course, the political pressure affecting Sweden at the beginning of the century contributed to this difference in climate. Sweden lost Finland, Åland and part of Västerbotten to Russia in 1809. Bernadotte, the French marshal imported to be Sweden’s crown prince, gave up all ideas of revenge and instead forced a Swedish union with Norway, which for centuries had had a common king with Denmark. This political reversal was the basis in Sweden for the so-called Gothic Union (1811), with the idea of reviving “the old Goths’ devotion to freedom, manly courage, and honest mind.” In that spirit, for example, E. G. Geijer wrote his poem about the hereditary peasant. Professor Anton Blanck points out the dilemma in his work about Geijer’s Gothic poetry (1918): “The first conscious national movement in the 1800’s was born in those months when a new and untraditional foreign policy placed Sweden definitely outside participation in the century’s great idea of nationality.”

Sweden and Grundtvig

“Something in his mental structure is foreign to the Swedish temperament.”
August Sohlman in Aftonbladet [The Evening News] October 11, 1872.

We should always hold in mind that contacts between the Nordic countries were still sporadic at the beginning of the 1800’s, especially across the Öresund [with Denmark] . It is , to be sure, worthy of note that certain works by Grundtvig were read in literary circles in Sweden, especially his Mythology (1808) and World History (1812). The literary historian Lorenzo Hammarsköld discovered “craziness combined with brilliance” in the writer, while the poet Esaias Tegnér confided in Jacob Adlerbeth, the founder of the Gothic Union, that “the man is a genius who has abandoned good sense.”

The epoch of the Scandinavian students

After the famous Caledonia, the first steamship, crossed Öresund in 1828, the contacts between Denmark and Sweden had become closer, even though at first this affected [only] the academic world. Certainly, it was through the first Scandinavian magazine that “the Gothenburg project” became known in Sweden.

Grundtvig formulated his ideas “About the Scientific Union of the North” in an article in the first issue of Brage and Idun, 1839. When Frederik Barfod founded this journal, he first thought of calling it The Ancient and the New North. Grundtvig opposed this title for reasons which are not always fully apparent, but which clearly show, that his “nationalism” is unimaginable in other than a universal perspective. Thus he writes to Barfod: “I believe and prophesy that the planned journal will have both a longer and finer life, if it doesn’t limit itself exclusively to the North…. On the contrary, foreign journeys, from the time of Arild, have been partof Nordic life and its special character, where there is no barrier, but [rather] a tendency to travel…. So I feel a great desire and need to make Nordic readers better acquainted with human life and its fruits under other skies… [and] to give the journal the whole world as its playing field.”

Unfortunately, Grundtvig’s language was difficult to understand. (It always is!) Professor Chr. Flor confided in Barfod: “Meanwhile, Grundtvig, as is well-known, has the misfortune that nobody, not even his best friends, knows what he means.”

How right Flor was, we sense when we read the reviews of “About the Scientific Union of the North”, whether they appear in Barfod’s journal or in the Swedish Aftonbladet.

In 1840, an article by Pete Wieselgren called “About the Scientific Union of the North; reply to N.F.S. Grundtvig by a Swede” was published in Barfod’s journal. Wieselgren was originally from Småland, which had faithfully preserved the Rud-beckian traditions. He had become a valued member of the Gothic Union. Wiesel-gren was best known for his temperance work, but he was also a religious reformer. In this capacity it had to be expected that he would criticize certain Grundtvigian thoughts severely. In his article, we read: “We thus do not approve that opinion that strives to preserve Nordishness – Brage and Idun and all of Valhalla’s divinities included – a continuing cultural separateness.” Wieselgren the reformer must naturally have been shocked by the manner in which Grundtvig’s thoughts were originally presented – as a relationship between “Odin and the White Christ.”

On the other hand, he was intrigued by the idea of a Nordic university. “It is undeniable that there may be something valuable in the very possibility that such an idea could be born and so boldly developed by a Northerner among this race of siblings, divided throughout some centuries [as they have been]..” Here we note an echo of the Scandinavian ideas that Grundtvig set himself against so strongly! Wieselgren declares that “the idea (of a scientific union alone) is proposed by a genius in Denmark.” But how should one bring this idea into fruition? “About the realization, a humble Swedish interpreter must offer his thoughts….Everything that Herr Grundtvig offers in his recommendation of a common university seems to us can be acquired in the following way: During summer vacations, when the four Latin Universities are not holding preparations for examinations, they could at little cost come together in a particular place, whether that be a fixed or a changing one, and there hold the lively discussion and whatever else could be part of the common University.”

Here we see for the first time a decisive difference between Sweden at one side and Denmark and Norway on the other. There was no comprehension – there couldn’t be comprehension in Sweden – of the basic enmity in Denmark and Norway toward the university, the seat of that kind of culture that they were opposing with all their might. We shall find several examples that show how in Sweden there was no understanding that it really ["the common University"] had to do with a counter-culture, a counter-university.

J. L. Almquist’s article, which was also printed in Barfod’s journal, lacks interest. Otherwise, it is related to the one that Lars John Hierta published in Aftonbladet, June 13, 1839. Hierta had started this newspaper in 1830, and it became called “The Peasant Class’s Bible.” Further, it is interesting to notice that Hierta was not, like most people of the time, smitten by the Scandinavian fever. In his article one reads: “The brilliant interpreter of Nordic myths has turned himself into a ‘Goth’ and represents more than all others the modern Gothicism that attempts to introduce Gothic elements into modern life.” Here is an interesting example of the survival of the Gothic myth even in the case of a leader of the liberal wing in Sweden.

Aside from the Gothic leadership he imputes to Grundtvig, Hierta’s criticism is poisonous. First and foremost, Grundtvig’s language wearies him. According to Hierta, the author’s style is “worthless” and shows “an affected simplicity.” Not to mention the content: “Grundtvig lives in a constant exaltation, in a delirium tremens, in which he has visions which are sometimes brilliant, but which often seize upon what is the [proper] subject of prose and earnest reasonableness, leaving the reader in total uncertainty about the true intention… Asa gods and Iceland and Cambridge ‘colleges’ and ancient times and ancient poets and saga writers and the Gjallarhorn and the sword of Heimdall and all sorts of glories are strewn around in this treatise, so that it swings around before the reader’seyes, and both the soundly serious and the fantastic poetic are stirred into an ‘apple-pudding’.”

The news that came over the Öresund and certainly reached a few people, didn’t mention Denmark’s first folkhighschool, Rødding. This oversight is all the more surprising, since a personality who in the future would play an important role in the creation of folkhighschools in Sweden, namely August Sohlman (1824-74), participated in the Scandinavian meeting of 1845 in Copenhagen. Through Danish friends, he learned to know the problems of Southern Jutland, but clearly nobody bothered to mention the folkhighschool in Rødding, which was precisely in the center of these problems and which indeed had been founded with the active help of the Scandinavianists.

As mentioned earlier, Grundtvig in 1843 had turned to the king with a proposal to turn “the Academy at Sorø” into a “people’s university”. We recall the unfortunate failure of this project. [The plan was favored by the then-ruling king Christian VII, but this monarch’s death left the Sorø idea undefended and at the mercy of bitter opponents in the Danish Folketing [[parliament[]. It was summarily dismissed.]

A Swedish discussion about “the Sorø project” is to be found in a book published by the educator J. H. Ekendal. In 1848 he undertook a journey for educational purposes, which among other things led him to Denmark. (Travels through Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, 1852).

In Copenhagen, he met Ingemann. This close friend of Grundtvig gave him information about “the prophet of the North”, which was so unfavorable that one must ask whether Ekendal had really understood him, or whether he had unconsciously falsified what he had learned about Grundtvig under the influence of the prejudices that were flourishing in Sweden. In his book, one reads: “In Copenhagen lives a unique and remarkable man, Dean Grundtvig. He has two universal remedies for all possible social ills. One is Christianity, the other nationality. Wherever Christianity isn’t appropriate, he turns to the emotion of nationality.”

When he speaks of “the Sorø Academy”, Ekendal states that it previously was nothing other than “a Latin school”. But it is to be “raised to higher-education status”, that is, a Danish college, for all kinds of youth of confirmation age. But the plans for creating this “peasants’ academy” have come to nothing.

To close with a more positive picture, I cite the letter which Frederika Bremer* wrote on March 30, 1849, to her friend, the schoolman and rector Per Bøklin, after a visit to Grundtvig: “Grundtvig – possibly the most original and powerful nature among Denmark’s great men. Lately, I have come in contact with him, but this contact was of a magnetic nature, at least from me to him, and the words he uttered about the Scandinavian North’s special task, the consciousness of life, just as much as the historical development, as that appears in his Mythology, the significance of these myths in connection with the interpretation of Christianity and its historical development – this and more, which Grundtvig said during a conver- sation of about two hours, in a spiriit and manner which could well have been that of the old prophets, now with flaming intimacy and again in polemical wrath, pleased me very much, and I long to hear him further on these subjects. G. is a handsome old man with a tall, strong figure, noble proportions, a pale, thoughtful face, snow-white hair; his head is as though carved in marble, and the flaming glance of his eye, full of dark passion, in that pale face, makes an impression which would not be easy to forget. G. is the first magnetic nature I have met in Denmark.”

Scandinavianism after the war of 1864

“One hears only what one understands.”
- Goethe

The 1864 war, the Danish defeat, put a period to the Scandinavian dreams. But new initiatives were undertaken, especially in Sweden. There, on March 2, 1865, the “Nordic National Union” was formed, which also published a journal, called The Nordic Journal for Politics, Economy and Literature. The editor was Professor G. K. Hamilton in Lund. Its intention was to make the Scandinavian struggles concrete, especially to inform [its readers] about the necessity for a political union among the three Nordic kingdoms, at the same time that their special characteristics should be respected. It should also be held in mind, that union between Sweden and Norway perpetually invited conflicting interpretations.

Two personalities, August Sohlman and S.A. Hedin, both at times editors of Aftonbladet – Hedin also being anticlerical – took the initiative to make contact with the Danes who belonged to the folkhighschool milieu. They wanted information about a school that might be able to influence the Swedes to be hospitable to the idea of the political unity of the North.

This pan-Scandinavian credo, as we know, stood in opposition to Grundtvigian ideas. But as Chr. Flor emphasized, even in Denmark it was difficult to comprehend Grundtvig’s thinking. One of the Grundtvigians was guilty of a Scandinavian devi-ation. This was Frede Bojsen, who belonged to “the dynasty of the nobility”, that is, the clan of Grundtvigian families immediately close to the master. (Bojsen was married to Herman Anker’s sister Mix – so we’ve really landed in the Grundtvigian “special alley”!) Frede Bojsen wrote an article which was published in the June/July issue of the Nordic Journal: “The folkhighschool must in its essence be neither Swedish, Nor-wegian, nor Danish, but in common Nordic.”

In the same year, the magazine turned to Frederik Bajer, a Dane who was [a partisan of] Scandinavianism, but was primarily famous as a pacifist. In 1908, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He called his article in the March/April 1867 issue “Recommendation for the Founding of a Nordic Folkhighschool”. Thus, yet another digression from Grundtvigian ideas. But in contrast to P. Wieselgren, who as pre-viously mentioned would have placed Grundtvig’s Nordic university in existing universities during their summer vacations, Frederik Bajer thought this was not feasible. Although he certainly wasn’t Grundtvigian, he declared, “It would perhaps be a labor harder than Hercules’ to sweep out the non-folkly [aspects] which, in the course of many centuries have collected within the framework of the universities. No, let us raise a new People’s High School by the side of the old.” First and foremost, he concluded, one must “clear out the very unfolkly leaven”, and as a result, the university “would fall like other old trees.”

This attack upon the university was not to the magazine’s taste. Professor Hamilton protested vigorously and made it clear that the journal was in no way in agreement with Frederik Bajer. Once more we can declare that Sweden had no “culture-war”. The popular culture was not seen as opposed to the academic.

The new Riksdag assembled for the first time on January 15, 1867. The [separate] peasant party had ceased to exist; peasant representatives constituted the majority in the new parliament and the Nordic National Union – apparently both editors of Aftonblad, Sohlman and Hedin – were certain that one of the most important tasks for the Scandinavian movement was to take the initiative to help the peasants.

These “hereditary peasants,” who later more prosaically called themselves “home-activists”. should be full citizens, as involved as others in the welfare of the state.

By chance, Sohlman had encountered Chr. Flor on the train, on the way to the World Fair in Paris. This Danish professor at the University of Kiel was a convinced Grundtvigian and earlier the rector of Rødding High School. Chr. Flor had traveled in Sweden, and remarked with surprise on the lack of interest in universal questions, a total indifference toward everything that went on outside of everyday life’s narrow circle. And Flor enlightened Sohlman about the role of the Grundtvigian folkhighschools in Denmark. Sohlman himself tells that he spent sleepless nightes until he finally decided to undertake to recommend to the Nordic National Union that it engage itself actively to create similar institutions in Sweden.

On the 5th and 11th of November, 1867, the Nordic National Union arranged discussions about “peasant highschools”. Sohlman opened the debate and gave information about the Danish folkhighschools “which amount to a new cultural-historical phenomenon, as peculiar as splendid. It is especially in the very most recent time that these institutions for learning have arisen, brought about by the awakening desire of the people themselves to strengthen nationality.”

Sohlman had written to the best known members of “the Little Theological Group”, the principals of Askov, Vallekilde and Testrup: Schrøder, Trier and Nørre-gaard. He had received long letters in reply, which presented the folkhighschool as it then was. “Awakening” and “enlightening” were mentioned, but it was emphasized that the awakening must be a national awakening. They reported that instruction occurred only through oral lectures. No textbooks were used. But singing – at least an hour a day – for song was the best instrument to help “the spiritual” to affect the whole of human life. The subjects of instruction were “the history of humanity” – mythology, Saxo, Snorre, the Bible, Herodotus, Homer… – along with practical subjects, if the need for such things came to be considered, but as little as possible of that kind. It was necessary to begin very simply, in the country, using a farm locality.

We don’t know how the members of the Nordic National Union reacted to this quite specific presentation of the folkhighschool’s spiritual world. But as Goethe has said: “Everybody hears only what he understands”. Certainly the members of the Union remembered what they could understand of this Grundtvigian message, or better, what they believed was part of the message. Some observed with satisfaction that the Danish folkhighschool came about without the interference of state and church. Carl von Bergen, the editor of the journal Framtiden [The Future], emphasized the following, in his contribution: “In this circle, I don’t need to point out extensively the enormous difference between Grundtvigianism, with its “happy Christianity”, its liberal-mindedness and its warm inter- est in the national, and on the other side the avoidance of light, the hangdog and imprac- tical pietism, which is most general in our land.” Education and school suffer under “the official guardianship of religiosity, whose authoritarian dominion these new folk-education institutions are intended to oppose by indirect methods.”

Olof Eneroth, in Framtiden, called Sweden “the Protestant Spain” [referring to this anticlericalism].

S.A. Hedin, the most liberal of all the liberals in Sweden, spoke against all involvement from the side of the State: “We must carefully protect ourselves against an almost instantaneous result, what [might] appear to be an advantage, the so-called enlightened despotism’s motto in the last century: ‘Everything for the people, nothing through the people…’ It is of great importance that the folkhighschool is not, and doesn’t appear to be, something arranged by the favor of the so-called higher classes, established by the calculation of others. Interest for this affair must be sought and awakened among the peasants themselves – which will give life to the undertaking.”

Sohlman doesn’t share this optimism: “Were the country people so warmly interested for a national education, so willing to make personal sacrifices for the sake of folk-enlightenment, that they could be expected entirely by themselves to construct a whole system of peasant highschools, then they would already be at a point which we should have reason to congratulate ourselves about. That spirit would already be in place, which should constitute one of the peasant highschool’s most noble results.”

Carl von Bergen had recommended that “the press should open a full and instructive discussion about the subject.” Finally, it was decided to print the discussions from the 5th and 11th of November. Seven thousand copies should be distributed gratis to the subscribers to Aftonbladet. This publicity was not without result: “Friends of Popular Education”, who had a meeting in Örebro in July and August of 1868, included a discussion about the folk-highschool in their program.

Once more it was Frede Bojsen who presented the Danish “college”. Accord-ing to the report in the local newspaper Nerike’s Miscellany, the whole Grundtvigian world was discussed at the meeting – awakening, mythology, “the living Word” – everything that was emotional and irritating for the Swedish public. Reaction was not slow. In the July/August, 1868, number of The Newsletter for the Public School, its editor Chr. L. Anjou condemned unmercifully this institution whose importation into Sweden was being attempted. “Concerning the currently much discussed question about folkhighschool, or peasant colleges” Anjou thinks “that we couldn’t imagine, here in this country under present conditions, that the establishment of any such permanent poetical-political circles would succeed for our peasantry.” The author hopes “that our people never should be in such circumstances that extraordinary revival establishments of similarly peculiar kind would be needed or could even come into question.”

The Nordic Magazine naturally replied to Chr. L. Anjou’s article. In the August/September, 1868 issue, one reads: “We couldn’t avoid finding in this statement a sad proof of how hard it is, for even keen and enlightened promoters of state-supported educational extension to free themselves from onesidedness in their judgment of occurrences which don’t carry the once-for-all-time accepted hallmark of officialdom.” The article is signed by the magazine’s editor. S. A. Hedin likewise showed his disapproval and wrote on September 12 in The New Illustrated Times: “In recent times, a quite marked enmity toward that promising institution has certainly come into the open, but let us hope that this unfriendly voice – although it is raised by the editor of a semi-official newspaper for the public schools – is and continues to be a voice crying in the wilderness.”

There was still another source of irritation for Chr. L. Anjou. He had read in Aftonbladet on the 12th of September, 1867, a report by O.S. Ålund, Ph.D. This member of the Nordic National Union had been sent to Denmark by Sohlman, to make personal contact with these schools, which were to be proposed in Sweden. Anjou doesn’t hesitate, he answers on November, 1868 in the Nordic magazine, that he has heard the folkhighschool represented “as a kind of poetical-political club” , which is distinguished by “a superficial mixture of poetry and Christianity.” This was no doubt an answer both to Ålund’s report and to his recommendation of a folk-highschool, which had been published in February, 1868.

As a conclusion to this account of the many initiatives which were taken by the Nordic National Union, I will just mention that Sohlman, in order to secure support for the initiation of folkhighschools, arranged for gratis speeches to be given in Stockholm by the cream of Sweden’s intelligentsia, each week in November and December, 1868.

One is surprised to observe that, at the same time the National Union in many ways strained energetically to make the Danish “highschool” known, and its intro-duction eagerly desired, the peasants themselves were taking [a separate] initiative to improve education in the country towns. And it was a consequence of their initiative, that the first folkhighschools were founded in Sweden. So they were indeed created “up from the bottom”, as a Swedish participant declared at the last Scan-dinavian Student meeting in Uppsala in 1875.

The Nordic National Union had, in spite of itself, played the same role in Sweden which the Grundtvigian movement had played in Denmark. This, in Norway, according to an international pattern, was called “the [battle] camp of the folk.” But the order of events was different, and I believe that if the folkhighschools were the work of the peasants in Sweden, their active engagement in schoolwork is connected with the unique position which the peasants have had in Swedish history.

The peasant in Swedish history

“There lies within the Swedish nature a certain desire in everyone, to, as they say, ‘have their word’ in the meeting.”
Matts Pehrson from Roslagen, Riksdagen 1856-58

It is well known that the Swedish peasant, during the whole course of history, has supported “town meeting”, where all kinds of questions could be handled without interference from nobleman, official, or priest. Not before the 1800’s did the town meeting disappear, as a consequence of constitutional reforms, of which the most sweeping was the decree about law changes in 1827. From the time of the foundation of Riksdagen in the 1400’s, the peasants were represented there, as the fourth estate of the nation. By the time of Gustav Vasa (1523-60), they still owned 52% of the land, and Olaus Petri wrote at that time: “Sweden is a country which is so protected by moors, rocks and forest that the common people cannot long be subdued by coercion and force, for they have great opportunities to set themselves up against their masters.”

During the Great-Power time in the 1600’s, the peasant class had to pay for Sweden’s political ambitions through the confiscation of crops, but officially their independent position was acknowledged. Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna declared at the Riksdag in 1642: “The peasant is a freeborn “innocent”, and it is an honor in Sweden to be the son of a peasant.” Two years later, the spokesman for the peasants let Riksdagen hear: “We know that in other lands, the common people are slaves; that dread we shall avoid, for we are nevertheless born free people.”

But the peasant survived all threats. When a new constitution had been worked out after the coup in 1809, Hans Järta would point out that it was not “modeled after any of the modern social pacts in the rest of Europe (a clear allusion to Montesquieu) “but according to the ancient Swedish costume, with the peasant’s jersey nearest the skin.”

The peasant class takes part in discussions in Riksdagen’s moving introduction of the public school in 1842.

Only in Sweden was the peasant class represented in the country’s parliament. During the first half of the 1800’s, when discussion began to lead toward the founding of a public elementary school obligatory and free of cost, the farmer class’s members in Riksdagen participated in the debates. The argument for and against the folk-highschool was forecast by these overtones, when that came to be discussed [later] in Sweden.

During the early part of Karl XIV Johan’s reign, the two higher classes, the nobility and the clergy, were usually opposed to ideas of enlightenment and romanticism. The peasant class was awakening about 1823, when for the first time the education of all citizens was being debated among them, under the leadership of Anders Danielsson, a member of the opposition party. “The time of innocence” was past, it was explained, and the liberal opposition was strengthened. Aftonbladet was founded, as earlier mentioned, subsequent to the 1830 July revolution in France, and this newspaper became “the Peasant Class’s Bible”. It had an obvious effect on the speeches of the peasant leaders. Thus, Per Sahlström commented in 1833 that only the higher classes received the advantage of the country’s [current] form of instruc-tion, while it was the peasants who paid for these privileges with their taxes. Still, there could be no question of sending farmers’ sons to school in the cities, for this would prepare them to look for “the insecure career of a servant”. In 1834, Sven Heurlin declares that “if the common man is to keep his ancient independence in the future, a school must be created, [appropriate to] the peasant”. But there was clearly doubt about the intentions of the government. In this matter, Sven Heurlin hopes that the government “won’t exercise that degrading policy, against which all the govern-ments in history should be warned, namely, through keeping the people ignorant, to prepare to be relieved of rule, themselves!”

A question which was vehemently argued was the financing of the proposed school. Already in 1823, a farmer from Västergötland had demonstrated “that the advantages of the respected clerical class have little relationship to the general welfare or distress of the country.” Sven Heurlin sharpens the argument. He suggests that district schools be established at common expense, and that the means be found through reductions “… in the salaries of the clerical class. There is a common opinion that bishops are unnecessary.”

Here, we note the tone of Aftonbladet. The bishop of Wingård in 1834 mourned the influence of “the falsest, most superficial liberalism, which threatens the founda-tions of State and Church”. Finally, the Riksdag decided that the townships should pay for the common school – which called forth lively protests from many peasant members. For example, Lars Petersson from Blekinge says: “I recognize my own incapacity, and I dare say that many besides me perceive that if one is to come into possession of that kind of learning, both I and many of the actual peasants, yes and besides that, most of our worthy class here assembled, and possibly a significant part of the respected master-class within other Estates and Corporations, would need to return to school, entering as pupils… For my part, I wonder how our poor Sweden would look, if that time comes when all the sons of countrypeople turn to writing as a career. Who then would [be left] to handle the axe, the spade, the flail and the plow?”

According to the royal decree of June 18, 1842, it was decided that the town-ships should finance the common school and that the church rectors should be the chairmen of the school committees. The peasant class were long indignant over this defeat…

The folkhighschool in Sweden begins “from below”
“What happens that is great, occurs quietly.
…Powerful masters with shouting and roars
beat up around cities and the state;
The peasant and his son build quietly –
though they peer from blood-sprinkled earth.
I don’t have a lot of learning;
All I know is what is mine.
What is right, I give to God and the king
and enjoy the rest freely.”
E. G. Geijer: The Hereditary Peasant, 1811

We have earlier had occasion to tell how disappointed the author of Peasant Stories [Bjørnson] was, when he abandoned the company of the literati and settled down among the peasants whom he had painted in such idyllic colors in his tales. We don’t want to make the same mistake, when we undertake to describe the attempts some Swedish peasants made to found folkhighschools!

The hereditary peasant, so revered throughout Swedish history, was to be once more praised by certain principals and teachers at the first schools. I shall speak of again, later. Here, instead, it should be pointed out that the hereditary peasant, or as we would call him today the farmer, had to be rather wealthy, in order to be elected to the Riksdag. There he undertook to represent [also] the more than 30% of the population, who lived, as it was said, “under the line” – the agricultural proletariat consisting of poor cottagers, superannuated farm workers and artisans, and the hired farm laborers paid “in kind”. The term “from below” should be understood as in opposition to the higher classes – precisely those who made up the Nordic National Union. There were no peasants among its members, and perhaps that explains why the echo from the Union’s propaganda for the Danish “highschool” didn’t extend to the country town.

Interest in the folkhighschool dawned among those who belonged to what we should call a farmer-aristocracy. For that matter, that’s the way it had been also in Denmark and Norway.

Hvilan

While the liberals in the Nordic National Union attempted to convince the common people of the need to create schools in Sweden like the Danish models, it was a farmer from Scånia, Ola Andersson, who really had some effect. He was a worthy heir of the “Honest Peasant Class”, actively engaged in local politics and later elected to the Riksdag. On March 28, 1867, Ola Andersson proposed the founding of a club in his township, Bara, with the purpose of gathering the peasants to discuss agricultural problems as well as other common questions. On the 16th of November, 1867, the Ola club considered the possibility of founding in the township a school on the model of “a higher common school”, as recommended in the Riksdag of 1856-58 – which already existed in about a dozen places in the kingdom.

Scarcely a month later, Dr. O. W. Ålund’s articles dealing with the Danish “highschool” were published in Aftonbladet. Nobody in the club read that newspaper. But a teacher at Alnarp’s Agricultural Institute, Dr. Pehrsson-Bendz, who came from a peasant family, was a subscriber to that notoriously liberal publication. He talked to a friend, County Councillor Hans Andersson, about what he had read. Andersson was a member of Bara Township’s Agriculture Club. Bendz was immediately elected to its committee for school questions.

But at first, no special attention was given to the information in those articles. There was no mention of them when the Bara club reported on the school question, on January 29, 1868. On the contrary, the argument about the proposed school was more like what had been heard in the Riksdag, when the public school was founded. The school should be in the country, it was thought, so as not to divorce pupils from their customary station as peasants. Mostly, the discussions had to do with practical arrangements – more about the financing of the school than about the content of its instruction.

[Outside] support was not urged nor desired, either from the township, the county, or the state. Moreover, it was emphasized that the school should not be under the influence of the church. (Here, we aren’t very far from the liberalism of Aftonbladet!) The budget was set at 3,772 riksdaler, of which 3,000 was to be the salary of the principal. In my opinion, it is right to emphasize that these farmers understood very well that the success of the school depended first of all upon the principal. The remaining 772 riksdaler should be used to rent a locale, buy fuel, and provide a minimum of school supplies. Each pupil should pay 100 riksdaler. Instruction should extend from the first of November until the end of March. A guaranteeing association was formed, and the three possibilities which might happen were discussed:

1. If at least 40 pupils enrolled, their tuition charge would cover expenses.
2. But at first, there might be fewer pupils.
3. If no pupils at all enrolled, the association would be committed to cover certain expenses.

Now, how should they go about it?

To allow for these three eventualities, the guaranteeing association should send out subscription lists. Those who signed on it should undertake responsibility for all costs, in case pupil tuition payments fell short. The signers should also be respon-sible for all the expenses which already had occurred, even if the school didn’t come into being. The guaranteeing association should collect at least 36 members, who would contribute 70 rdr. for the first year and 16 rdr. for the following year. Members should sign on for a period of five years, beginning January 1, 1868. The guaranteeing association should be considered established, when 36 members had signed. The association would elect a board of six persons. This board would choose a principal, who would be an ex officio member of the board.

From this example, we certainly get a good impression of the Scånian peasants’ grasp of reality! Furthermore, here we have the model that was to be used in the future for most of the schools.

When we see the surprisingly quick result of this plan, we must wonder whether an explanation may lie – more or less consciously – in the memory of former times, when “the Honest Peasant Class” had to look everywhere, to find a secretary who could handle their petitions. In any case – from the l7th of April, 1868, 44 persons – that is, 44 peasants – had signed the contract.

Thus the main question was solved. Now, where to find a principal? Olof Persson-Bendz wrote to a friend in Stockholm, a member of the National Union, Harald Wieselgren, who sent a hand-carried letter to Peter W. Denne, about all the characteristics which a future principal would need. He should be able to sing, to arouse enthusiasm in his pupils, to use “the living word” effectively – but where to find such a rare bird? Harald Wieselgren couldn’t suggest anyone.

After this failure, Bendz turned to his academic colleagues. Professor Otto Torell, at Lund University, suggested one of his fellow-teachers, the geology lecturer Leonard Holmström (1840-1919). To convince him to accept the appointment – which one must admit was an unusual one – Professor Torell assured Holmström that he would be well paid for a job that wouldn’t take more than six months, and then the rest of the year he could give to his own research. Holmström accepted the offer.

Now it was a question of finding a locale. After a rather long search, a closed inn called “Hvilan”, situated beside the country road between Lund and Malmö, near the Åkarp railroad station, was chosen.

The Aftonblad articles had been loaned to Holmström, but it is clear that such reading didn’t give him any desire for more information about the Danish “highschool”. But there were more reasons not to refer to Grundtvigian ideas than Holmström’s lack of enthusiasm for them. The Swedish clergy were bitterly hostile toward Grundtvig’s religious philosophy, and even though [the school plans] had declared separation from the influence of the church, at the same time it would be wiser not to come into conflict with it. The publicity for the future school in the local press reflects this consideration. In Lund’s Weekly Paper for June 6, 1868, for example, we read that a school is to be created, inspired by “the Danish Peasant Highschools”, but the fact is pointed out that the Scånian school is “significantly different, to agree with our circumstances and our people’s character.”

Thirteen years later, Ola Andersson acknowledged in a letter to Holmström, that one learned from the Danes “that our schools perhaps became so practical that a good deal of spirit and life and uplift was thus lost – and perhaps the schools themselves also [lost quality]“.

Önnestad

The three “historical” folkhighschools, Askov, Vallekilde and Testrup, which were to set the tone and create the form of the Danish folkhighschool during its first period, were founded in 1865 and 1866, Sagatun in Norway in 1864 and Christopher Bruun’s Vonheim (Romundgaard) in 1867. The first three Swedish folkhighschools date from the same period. They were founded in 1868, but the historical situation they were born was different. I’ll return to this.

The same year that Hvilan was started, another school was begun in the northern part of Skåne. In connection with this, it is interesting to observe that there, we are in an area affected by religious revival. It’s otherwise with “the Southern Plain”, an open landscape with broad fields, relatively heavily populated. People here are strongly realistic – the creation of Hvilan is also a witness to this – but have always been indifferent to religious ecstasy. The northern part of Skåne was even then like [the later] forest-Sweden, where revival movements were widespread in the 1800’s. The area around Önnestad, where the school was founded, was one of the so-called “revival towns”, where “the religious passion of the folk, never dampened, is plainly easy to bring into full blaze”, as E. Newman expresses it in Swedish High Church, Low Church and Free Church, 1932.

The district was first affected by the Moravians, but during the period that inter-ests us, the new evangelism inspired by C. A. Rosenius’s movement was the one that counted. This should be emphasized, since it is noticeable that there was otherwise no connection between these movements and the schools during the Swedish folkhighschool’s first period, which was contemporary with the strongest influence of revivalism.

In Önnestad, however, action did come about thanks to Rector C. A. Bergman, who was considered to be the most liberal cleric in Sweden. Bergman took the initiative, he even went to Denmark, where he contacted Hindholm Højskole, then the least Grundtvigian folkhighschool in the country – Ålund had also visited that school. But now the same thing happened in Önnestad as in Hvilan: One farmer, Sven Nilsson in Everöd, a Riksdag member like Ola Andersson, settled matters.

It was a difficult job in this tract, which because of failed harvests was ravaged by famine. Peasants who were urged to finance the school and to be pupils in it, were reluctant. Most of them lived on small farms and without doubt would have subscribed with conviction to the opinion expressed in Riksdagen just before the end of 1840/41 – that the communes should pay for the common school. “It would be very hard,” Peter Pettersson of Slätthult, Jönköping province, had declared, “if poor fellows must take the clothes from their backs, so that their children might learn the names of Swedish cities… The gentlemen on the committee little realize what the poor man would suffer, if he must sell his last sweater in order that his child, who later would be fit only to be a shepherd or a milkmaid, should learn history and geo-graphy… I believe plenty of honest folk have lived and died in Sweden… without being literate [to say nothing of ] learning history and geography.”

I’m sure that the poverty-stricken small-farmers of this area, who sometimes had to eat bread made from bark, would have listened with a sensitive ear to these words, pronounced about twenty years before any discussion of folkhighschool. But could they have been influenced by the speech which Sven Nilsson of Everöd gave at the county council, September 12, 1867? He said: “A question of life-importance…is that of a more widespread general education, in the broadest sense of the word. The cultivation of knowledge more pervasive of life’s situations, and a clearer awareness, among the sons of the common people, [one] not at the cost of simplicity and purity of morals, [one] which maintains the valued strength and self-sufficiency of earlier days, must lie close to the heart of every true friend of his country.”

Were such “gothic” expressions understood? In any case, one can imagine that they confused, yes, they even hindered the promoters of the Önnestad school from understanding the concept of “folklihood”, a concept without which it was impossible to understand “folkhighschool”. Anyway, that’s the impression one gets, when one reads what Bergman wrote after his visit to Hindholm.

Bergman, a supporter of the Scandinavian ideas, had been following the discussions in the Nordic National Union. He observed with anxiety S. A. Hedin’s and Carl von Bergen’s anticlericalism, and feared that recommendation from these Scandinavians would result in the creation of “irreligious centers”. When he heard about the plans for establishing Hvilans folkhighschool, he also expressed his fear that these rested on anti-Christian ground.

During this summer (1868), while the two districts in Skåne strove to found folkhighschools, no confidence otherwise was established between the future schools. As Bergman dreaded “irreligiosity” at Hvilan, so Leonard Holmström was uneasy about the religious exaltation in the newly evangelistic milieus. Holmström had traveled to Norway to make some geological investigations there. (One may be surprised that it didn’t occur to him to contact the Norwegian folkhighschools!) He wrote to Ola Andersson, that he hoped that unctuous words wouldn’t damage “our cause” with moderate people.

In contrast to the situation in Åkarp, it was difficult to collect funds for the folk-highschool in Önnestad, for the reasons mentioned earlier. Here, as in the case of Hvilan, it was finally the wealthy, powerful, and thoughtful peasants, together with Riksdag members and county councilmen, who supplied the school with the necessary means, Bergman reports in a letter. And so it was announced in the local press, beginning with the 22nd of August, 1868, that in spite of obstructions and opposition, a folkhighschool would open on November 1 in Önnestad, thanks to indi-vidual contributions.

Olof Eneroth, who had compared Sweden with “a Protestant Spain” in its anti-clericalism, was clearly not shocked by any religious exaltation in the revival district where Önnestad’s folkhighschool was founded. Indeed, he sent an enthusiastic letter to August Sohlman, who included it in Aftonbladet on November 5. “I know that you will rejoice more than anyone… and therefore I want … to inform you that both of the Skånian folkhighschools are now beginning their work, in Önnestad already on Sunday, in Åkarp yesterday, the 2nd of November. I was present at both occasions.” Önnestad’s locale is “a Skånian peasant holding, one of those Skånian peasant houses with thatched roof, which are so well known… The whole dedication, if one may call it that, was simple and unpretentious, in the way that the whole task is undertaken.” Eneroth summarizes his impressions in the following conclusion: “Regarding the coming of both these folkhighschools into existence, there is this joyful circumstance, that the common people themselves, through their contribu- tions have made it possible to realize the proposed and developed idea. Confidently looking into the future, they had, after the thorough consideration which marks [all] their undertakings, taken hold of the affair, and even now are confidently looking for both teachers and students. It was heart-encouraging to watch them. Honor and praise to the Swedish peasant in his fight to win and to spread his own folkly education.”

Herrestad

In spite of all its efforts, the Nordic National Union had not managed to create folkhighschools. What should be done? It was Dr. O. W. Ålund who took the initiative. He contacted a peasant member of the Riksdag in Stockholm, and tried to interest him in his plan. It couldn’t have been better. Jonas Andersson of Häckernäs, East Göt-land, had already made himself noticed in the Riksdag of 1856/58, when he proposed the establishment of a higher public school. Obviously, this man was interested in educational questions. Moreover, one should emphasize another of his merits, which was unusual: he was a member of the National Union, where peasants were other-wise missing.

An agreement was quickly made between Jonas Andersson and Dr. Ålund. The Riksdag member undertook to find students and a locale. This was relatively easy, since East Götland was a good agricultural area and therefore had well-to-do peasants. These farmers were known for their sense of freedom and independence, and can be considered as true “hereditary farmers”. Furthermore, the province had been a spiritual center during the Middle Ages. This is shown by Alvastra monastery, which had belonged to the Cistercians, and Vadstena, the mother-cloister for the whole order of Birgitta, an important cultural center during the days of the Kalmar Union. In the eyes of Scandinavians, this was a fine inheritance for a folkhighschool.

Herrestad became the only school which was founded according to the Danish model – that is, without any guaranteeing organization, and no leadership outside of the director, who carried the sole responsibility. But Dr. Ålund left the school after one year, and Herrestad became re-organized according to Hvilan’s model. The new director, P. A. Gödecke (1840-90) was one of those who attempted to give the folk-highschool a Nordic profile.

The Folkhighschool’s spiritual milieu
A school free of examinations

We have seen that the first folkhighschools in Sweden emphasized that they had nothing in common with those of Denmark. Actually, they had borrowed more from the Danish folkhighschool than they were willing to recognize.

One could enter a folkhighschool without an examination, and there was no examination when the course ended. “Education for life” in Grundtvig’s expression, couldn’t be sanctioned through an examination. Without having under-stood the real content of this “education for life” – which couldn’t be understood, either, without knowledge of the whole Grundtvigian connection – yet the Swedes were aware that the education peasants needed couldn’t be cast in the same form as the traditional schools. Thus, in Sweden as in Denmark and Norway, one entered folkhighschool without an examination and left it without certification. In this way, the folkhighschool was placed outside the traditional academic world. It is still difficult today – yes, almost impossible, for a foreigner to understand how schools without examinations and degrees can exist, they don’t serve any practical purpose, we think. So difficult it is to root out the fetish of approval by examination!

“Awakening” in a Swedish sense

We have earlier spoken of the aggressiveness which was in Sweden turned against the role that “awakening” played in the Danish folkhighschool. In Sweden, it was said, what counted was to impart knowledge, use books instead of depending on “the living word” [which might be] exercised with more or less talent. I have also cited the Danish farmer, Niels Pedersen Vittenbjerg, who sad that he had taught himself to run his farm according to “Nordic myths, as I heard them from Schrøder at Askov in my youth.”

Obviously it happened also in Sweden, that folkhighschool students were awakened, and used this “awakening” to enrich their daily life. This “awakening in a Swedish sense” I have found in a letter written to L. Holmström in 1886 by a [former] pupil.

J. C. Gudmundsen first declares that he values Holmström more than any other person on earth: “Perhaps it is because I know so little about leaders in the world. I can’t imagine whatpeople know and think who come to Holmström with a better grounding and with stronger aptitude as a result of better-off parents than I have. They must leave with much greater profit [from it] . From Holmström I have discovered what is meant by a “sleeping” and an “awakened” condition. “But forgive me, I have not yet gained any good from it. Sleepiness and disability still oppress me. Well, there are quite natural reasons for that. My parents “sleep”, requiring much less of life, leading a monotonous and withdrawn life, without any special faith that there is anything better than the life they have seen father and grandfather lead. But I have had my eyes opened to what is backward in their way of life, and that will spur me to greater activity. “But here at Öregården (the Scånian agriculural school) I won’t be sufficiently awakened. Here, we never hear an inspiring word from the teachers – everything is monotonous and stiff. I think that a course at Hvilan would do these teachers good. For forgive me if I say that they are asleep. What they want to see in us is slavish fear and politeness. Several times we have been promised demerits for what we learned in the fresh air of Holmström’s living room, and talked over, the five of us, in the dormitory room we share. Such [treatment] fosters hatred and depression. The happy songs that were heard in our room at first have long since been stilled. “When I consider myself in solitude, I am aware that I still have much to do, to become a useful member in the chain of active life. I feel the weight of an upbringing that was basically wrong, and to restore this to what it should be is very hard, yes, impossible. That I had a poor upbringing, Holmström knows better than I, even though Holmström has never seen my home. But my descendants, if I have any, can certainly have things better. From Holmström’s lectures I have understood the matter thus: Perseverance and industry must improve things more and more, generation after generation. and a proper religious stance results from living a just and useful life and from striving for one’s race’s development and progress. What I have once decided shall be carried out, whatever the cost. I intend, in a practical and rewarding way, to transform my father’s holding into a model farm in the district. I want to see my father walking around hisprosperous acres, enjoying his pipe. Only when I have seen that will I think about the fight I must make for my own welfare. “From where I am now, I could probably obtain fairly good employment. But my parents would benefit from that. And I myself fear that I’ll go sleeping, all my life. Besides, it wouldn’t give me any joy to be a sort of boss over poor breadwinners, unless I could lessen their misery. Under landlords, they are just like domestic animals – yes, worse. “Perhaps it sounds arrogant to say that I think I have awakened, as if out of a long dream. But what is certain is that I have found a turning-point in my life, and I can only wonder whether I will have had good fortune, the next time I stand face-to-face with Holmström. “Forgive my ignorance in spelling and sentence structure, and if I have otherwise written anything stupid and mistaken, please correct me – for in that case, I will have taken wrong conclusions from Holmström’s lectures.”

The folkhighschool, a center of culture in the country district

The constitutional reform according to the law of 1827 was realized during the whole century (except in Dalarna). The peasant found himself in a social vacuum, where nothing had replaced the humane, close contacts which had existed with the district councils. The folkhighschool attempted to pull the peasants out of their isolation, by setting up public lectures, which met with good attendance almost everywhere. Take for example the public lectures at Hvilan during the winter of 1868/69:

• Charles XII
• The introduction of the Reformation in Sweden
• About the solar system
• Concerning geological formations, especially with reference to Skånia.
• About royal power and the nobility, up till 1680
• About the physiology of the ear and the eye
• About the union of Sweden and Norway
• About the qualities and manifestations of heat
• About the origin and spread of Mohammedanism
• About winds, weather and climate
• Overview of Sweden’s history, especially with reference to the state constitution

Proximity to Lund made it possible for L. Holmström to attract good scholars to Hvilan, so that the quality of these lectures was very high.

A foreigner has to express her amazed admiration – in French country districts, it is still impossible even now to bring farmers together to listen to [lectures about] such subjects, so distant from their daily life…

The director of the folkhighschool in Fornby formulates the purpose of these public lectures, in his yearly report for 1878/79: ” We have tried through them [the public lectures] to arouse the participation of the country people in the school, and even in some degree to act as an awakener upon the population and to make of the school a kind of spiritual center in the locality.” According to Leonard Holmström, this task was all the more needful, because “the church no longer gives the spiritual inspiration mankind needs.” In this way, the folkhighschool became, in many areas, what we today would call a cultural center for the country district.

The Sharpshooter movement
“This Sweden, almost closed off from the sea, the dark side of the North,
that turns toward the barbarians in the East.”
Grundtvig: Handbook of World History III

“I planted you like an iris, among the fresh winds of the North Pole…. I placed you as a knightly outpost for light, by Europe’s eastern portal , and you gave yourself [to be] a prisoner to Asia’s idols.”
Viktor Rydberg: Tomtebissen, 5/1/1857

In our times, we no longer talk about “love of fatherland” as [we did] during the previous century. Everything that in different ways is associated with that “antiquated” concept has been discarded. We cultivate “identity”, the tendency that is apparent everywhere and that Alex Haley has made known as “back to the roots” – in Sweden, a “dig-where-you-are movement”.

This current is defined in various ways from land to land, from region to region, yes in every milieu, no matter how small it may be. Therefore, it is at once under-standable and quite legitimate, that the search for identity has developed differently in each Nordic country. In Sweden at the middle of the 1800’s, a new patriotic mani-festation arose, which the folkhighschool was taken by, like all Swedish society. It has to do with a movement which is forgotten today and which is often denied when it touches on the national consciousness in Sweden, namely the sharpshooter movement.

Sweden’s ancient fear of its powerful neighbor in the east was painfully remem-bered, when the Crimean war broke out in December, 1853. Denmark and Sweden/Norway declared their neutrality. But in 1854, a French army-corps captured the Russian fortress Bomarsund on [nearby] Åland. In a debate at the upper house of the Riksdag on November 1, the same year, it was declared that “civilisation and freedom” must be defended against “the barbarism and despotism of the East”.

The great powers had guaranteed Sweden’s boundaries, but one couldn’t feel safe. In October, 1859, the author and newspaperman Viktor Rydberg turned to the peasant class and urged its members to take a hand in the defense of the fatherland. Defense was dependent on only 3% of the population, he wrote, although there were 400,000 men in the country able to bear arms. Rydberg, a humanist, was not motiv-ated by any desire for war, but by a deep fear of the Russian danger. Therefore he recommended the creation of an army of defense like the Swiss model. In these circumstances, the sharpshooter movement arose.

We can hardly imagine today the enthusiasm that this arming of the people awakened in all of Sweden. We have pointed out the democratic character of the movement. Sweden, which was divided among four classes, was now united into one, in meetings, festivals, and target practice, as was declared at the great national celebration in Stockholm on November 14, 1863: “Masters and apprentices, lords and servants, wealthy farmers and hired men” all assembled around the same table to share meals.

Sweden of “the Great Power’s time”, now reduced to a small state, proclaimed with poorly concealed pride: “Our fatherland has the honorable place among European states to be, in the far North, Europe’s outpost against the pressure of the Russian colossus upon the West.”

The “old dreams” were not completely forgotten, nor was the cult of the hereditary peasant. Hadn’t Engelbrekt, in the 1400’s, freed Sweden from Danish tyranny, thanks to his peasants and miners?

The sharpshooter movement went in for an enthusiastic worship of Engelbrekt, who was compared with William Tell and with Garibaldi. At the congress in Örebro in 1868 – the congress at which Anjou opposed the Danish folkhighschool so vehemently – it was declared that education of the people and arming of the people should go hand in hand. This happened in the folkhighschools, where principals, teachers and students enrolled in the sharpshooter movement’s ranks.

Before August Sohlman placed his energy in the Scandinavian movement, he had been gripped by the wave of enthusiasm for the sharpshooter movement in the whole country – how could he have avoided it? At a festival arranged in Stockholm on November 19, 1860, he declared: “Such a meeting as this one ought to have a different purpose, namely to express an opinion about the target practice question in general and to exercise a lively influence on the great national movement which begins to be discussed in our country.”

The meeting of the Scandinavian students in Kristiania

If the Sharpshooter movement is forgotten in today’s Sweden, one gets the impression that the neighboring countries have never known about it. As far as Norway is concerned, that is easy to understand. The relationship beween the two countries, always charged with conflict, became worse that same year that Viktor Rydberg recommended the arming of the people. In 1859, the Storting [theNorwegian parliament] had demanded the abolition of the office of viceroy, in order to achieve equality with Sweden. Sweden’s Riksdag refused. Bjørnson turned to Norwegian youth: “Do you hear what the Swedes are saying, young Norwegian man?”

During the 1860’s, the first folkhighschools appeared in the three countries, but under such fundamentally different political conditions, that according to my percep-tion it explains why so little interest was shown, at least in Sweden, for the establish-ment of common Nordic connections.

So neither Hvilan nor Önnestad nor Herrestad sent any delegates to the student meeting in Kristiania in 1869. And yet this congress had placed a discussion about “the high school” on its program. But the meeting was organized by academic people, and this topic was combined with discussions about political Scandin-avianism. Such a confusion couldn’t have avoided irritating those who represented the Danish and Norwegian “highschools”. Their voice was raised more thunderingly by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson than by any other.

The academicians, who were represented by professors from the Nordic universities, reacted with unanimous negativity against this voice, yes, to cite M. J. Monrad from Copenhagen, their opposition was so strong that it was impossible and quite meaningless to answer the Norwegian popular leader.

The Swedish folkhighschool had left their representation up to two academic people, who had little confidence in that kind of school. They totally lacked comprehension of the conflict that arose for the first time at this congress, and which in Denmark and Norway was to set “the high school” and the university against each other in a “culture war”.

It was university lecturer Esaias Tegnér, junior, and a representative of the obligatory school in Sweden, who spoke for the three folkhighschools. “The murmur of the people’s springtime” as Bjørnson had expressed it with his characteristic enthusiasm, elicited from Tegnér the following answer: “In Sweden, there has been no need for a movement for either outer or inner freedom, of the same kind as in the brother countries, and national consciousness has therefore not seemed so important in this situation.”

The abyss which opened between “the high school” and the university, and which was a clear expression of the political ferment, was felt as a threat, which happily had not shown itself in Sweden: “The political aspect, which with these (the highschools in Denmark and Norway) exerted a significant influence, is lacking in Sweden”. Tegnér emphasized also, that “the fatherland rapture” which in Denmark was conveyed through “the poetical and the religious” wasn’t recognized in Sweden, where the schools were “more practical”. But what all these schools, in all circumstances, had in common was that they all worked in “the spirit of Scandinavianism”. Once more Grundtvig’s ideas – which of course they didn’t know much about – were mixed together with the message of Scandinavianism.

The other Swedish delegate, lecturer A. Rundbäck, explained “the fatherland rapture” which had developed on the Norwegian and especially on the Danish side, by the fact that Denmark had been forced to fight against “Germanism” and this, therefore, “had strengthened the nationalistic spirit”. Sweden had never needed to meet such a problem, which explains why the folkhighschool hasn’t the “same consciousness-raising character”. Furthermore, “the Danish commoners … have suddenly, twenty years late, obtained especially broad political freedom”, and therefore that country’s folkhighschools have become “politically educating institutions…. In Sweden, the free peasant has from time out of mind had his word to say about decisions, both locally and nationally.” Once more, the noble peasant!

It is enough to notice the Swedes’ choice of words, to understand how distant they stood from that Bjørnson’s appeal to the congress:

“First, when the sighing of the people’s springtime
Over forest and field
Awakens all the hundred thousands
Then comes the time of trouble.”

Bjørnson’s crusades in Sweden, 1871 and 1873

November 1871

“Rome conquered Greece, but [then] Greece absorbed Rome. Sweden had conquered Norway, but now Norway was conquering Sweden.”
August Strindberg: The Servant Woman’s Son , 1886.

There was no hope in 1860 that Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who fought untiringly for “young ideas”, would be understood in Sweden. [Knowing this] he could toss out words such as: “I have no culture in common with the Swedes, they live outside the rest of the civilized world”. The events of the 1860’s, which are analysed in the Norwegian book from which this is excerpted, would certainly not have changed Bjørnson’s view. A poet’s intellectual development is anyway not to be foreseen and doesn’t follow rational logic.

Anyway, Bjørnson wrote on October 6, 1871, to his Danish friend, the author Rudolf Schmidt, that in November he intends to travel to Sweden on a lecture tour. “It is my intention to introduce myself with a neutral subject, which I can handle well; once I am known and if possible liked, I’ll continue with Grundtvig and introduce him among the Swedes. For many years, I have felt this to be a mission.”

Certainly in Gothenburg, in the circle surrounding Business and Seafaring Times, he would find understanding among his friends S. A. Hedlund and Viktor Rydberg. Their magazine had published articles about the culture-war in Denmark. [S. A. Hedlund (1821-1900) - liberal journalist and politician, as chief editor of Gøteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning (Gothenburg’s Business and Maritime News) made his newspaper the leading cultural and liberal publication of his time. Viktor Rydberg (1828-1895), a populr novelist and poet, joined him as a colleague. Both of these men were influenced by Grundtvig, whose "Gothenburg thoughts" were behind Hedlund’s interest in founding the Gothenburg Univeristy in 1887, although this later developed into a traditional university.]

Bjørnson came to Sweden in 1871 and gave lectures both in Gothenburg and Stockholm. Not a single word about Grundtvig. The public, the cultural elite who were accustomed to attend lectures, were charmed by the author of the “peasant tales”. “Never before or since has a lecturer inspired such enthusiasm as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson,” declared the newspapers.

Bjørnson surely thought that this enthusiasm was an expression of interest in Grundtvig. He wrote to his friend, Kristofer Janson, a teacher at Vonheim: “Great memories from the Sweden trip. I shall soon go there again and talk about Grundtvig, about the awakening of church, school, and people, I have never seen a field more thirsty for him than the Swedes…. My trip became a sort of mission-journey, I did nothing but preach, the Swedes hadn’t understood that it was a whole new education we wanted.”

There were so many events in Norway in 1872 that Bjørnson didn’t travel to Sweden. Above all, there was the Student Association’s meeting, which was devoted exclusively to the folkhighschool. It began in the University’s locale on Karl Johann Street, [Christiania] on April 22. Opponents and supporters of the folkhighschool confronted each other more acrimoniously than ever, nor would it ever be as violent later. One might say that it was a head-on collision between the academic culture and the “folkly”. On the political level, it brought about a struggle between the defenders of “young ideas” in democratic Norway and the conservatives, who feared for their privileges.

P. A. Gödecke, who had succeeded Dr. Ålund at Herrestad, had been invited, but didn’t come. So there was no Swedish representative at this congress, which hasn’t been forgotten in the annals of the Danish and Norwegian folkhighschools. All that was inscribed in Denmark’s memory, for example,was that at this meeting, the principal of Askov, Ludvig Schrøder, spoke the famous words about folkhighschool being held “wherever students’ need and teachers’ abilities meet.”

Once more we find the explanation in the historical, that is to say the political, situation. Johan Sverdrup, a member of the Radical party, was introducing parlia-mentarism in Norway, and in 1872 forced through a demand for the Cabinet to part-icipate in the meetings of the Storting . But the majority of the members [of this Norwegian parliament] were peasants, and their leader Jaabæk was dreadful to Swedish eyes. Aftonbladet had published articles about this Jaabæk, who was leading Norway back into barbarism, and it was a frightening thought that such a situation might arise in Sweden.

On exactly that political level, Bjørnson had attempted to bring the political leaders of the three countries to a “meeting for democracy in the North”. He described this “Meeting of Three Emperors” in a letter to Sophus Høgsbro: “The Swedes are the ones who will learn the most at the meeting, and in all respects will be most grateful for it. They don’t share our ground of faith, the “folkly” is unclear to them, but they will get a firm perception of what Nordic freedom, not French, will mean in our society. Sweden is my special mission-field, just wait a few years and you will come to see something succeed here, which now you would suppose unbelievable. The Swedes are a Great People: truth convinces them powerfully, they meet greatness with enthusiasm….”

What a disappointment was [in store] for the ardent poet! Already in 1871, he had turned to Count Arvid Posse, who had joined the Farmers’ Party, and wrote to him that it was necessary to “liberate the spirit of the folk”, something that seemed to the Swedes to mean that Norway planned on freeing itself from Sweden. Finally, a meeting did take place in Hamar on July 26, 1872, but even S. A. Hedlund and Viktor Rydberg, the only Swedes, attended only as private individuals. They explained that “the serene and promising development of Swedish politics” must not be disturbed – which in plain language meant that they were on the point of reaching a compromise solution about land taxes – which the members of the Farmers’ Party called “the century-old injustices” – [and they didn’t want the boat rocked?]

February – March 1873

“A sound like a peal of thunder went over the land,
and he felt it as if a troll had come forth with power to bewitch.”
August Strindberg: The Servant Woman’s Son, 1886.

This time, Bjørnson did lecture about Grundtvig, not only in Gothenburg and Stockholm, but also in various places in the countryside. He even dared to present this “folkly” culture in Uppsala, the seat of the most venerable academic culture. But he understood how to speak very politely about “folklihood’s” part in the struggle for freedom, so that the message was well accepted in this place, where Rudbeckianism and Gothicism were not yet completely forgotten, and where Scandinavianism lived on in his auditors’ minds. At least, that is the impression one gets from the newspaper reports.

After Bjørnson’s lecture in Norrköping, he was consulted by a young Swede, who wanted to find a suitable Danish folkhighschool to visit. Bjørnson recommended Askov. The young man spent three months there, listening to the famous mythological lectures by Ludvig Schrøder. He mentions them in his letters home to his father. He explains that it was like peeling an onion – one layer after another was taken away to find the kernel, but none was to be found. This young man, Fridtjuv Berg, eventually served twice as Minister of Church Affairs in Sweden. [Fridtjov Berg (1851-1916), as a member of the government in 1912, was influential in obtaining state support for students and increased teacher pay. At the same time, the requirement of state inspection of the folkhighschools was more dubious from the liberal point of view.] Without doubt, he could have subscribed to the judgment that Sohlman expressed in his obituary of Grundtvig: “that gloomy, mysterious, disorderly man, incapable of order, who through his dark imagin-ation has no attraction for the Swedish people”. (Aftonbladet, October 11, 1872)

But even Sohlman, in his Aftonbladet report of Bjørnson’s lectures, couldn’t avoid falling for the speaker’s charisma, like everyone else, and didn’t dare attack the ideas presented.

It was the same everywhere that Bjørnson lectured about Grundtvig. Only one exception is worth noticing, that is in Örebro. There, a statue of Engelbrek had been mounted in 1865, there it was that he had declared that the arming and education of the people should go hand in hand, indeed it was also there that Anjou had expressed his sharp criticism of Grundtvig’s ideas. It was only in that city that the local newspaper published an exhaustive criticism of all that Bjørnson had presented and emphasized the “socialistic and political” character of Grundtvigian followers.

In spite of Anjou’s complete lack of understanding of Grundtvig’s thought, as shown by the article, he appears to have published daily notices in the same newspaper, announcing the folkhighschool which was about to be founded in Närke. There was no connection indicated between Bjørnson’s lectures and the efforts being made to interest the common people in that future institution.

One must be surprised that none of the five folkhighschools existing at this time were “taken” by the Norwegian poet’s message.

Bjørnson’s “crusade” to Sweden, his “mission-field”, became an episode with no result. An article in The Magazine for Politics, Economy and Literature, written by the historian Hans Forssell, sheds light on this in his ironic comment: “Poetry presented without the support and approval of the Swedish Academy, and religion with growing success by the Evangelistic Patriotic Diocese…. This Grundtvigianism, experimentally imported and offered in the lecture hall, has been able to flourish only as an orange grove might in a drawing room.”

The Nordic renaissance in Sweden

“That small patriotism which we can still find among our Swedish folk, has been of the old kind, [stemming] from the national pride of the 1600’s. The instinctive popular struggle to express one’s innermost character in every circumstance of life has been something unknown to us.”
Gustav Sundbärg – The Swedish Folk Temperament, 1911.

Carl van Bergen, the promoter of Scandinavianism, went to Copenhagen to take part in a “Friends Meeting”* planned for the 8th of September. However, Grundtvig died on the 2nd and was buried on the 10th. Naturally, the “Friends Meeting” which was then held on the 11th and 12th of September became a memorial celebration for the departed leader. [The term "Friends" in this case refers to "Friends of Grundtvig" - a group composed mostly of liberal theologians and other educated men, who supported Grundtvig’s ideas and the development of folkhighschools in the latter half of the 19th century in Denmark.] Van Bergen’s speech was placed between Bjørnson’s, as the best known representative for the popular movement, and the one given by the Danish peasant and Folketing (parliament) member N. J. Thermansen, who had so brilliantly defended “folk-education” in the Folketing. The placing of the Swedish statement seems like a deliberate irony, as Carl van Bergen’s talk shows clearly that the violent fight going on in the neighboring countries, between a culture sprung from ancient depths, and the higher class’s education fed from foreign springs, was incomprehensible to a Swede. “Culture war” just didn’t match Sweden’s histor-ical traditions. Carl van Bergen spoke about the Nordic renaissance in Sweden: “The defenders of higher education walk in front, and the people follow them eagerly.”

The articles about Jaabæk in Aftonbladet, mentioned earlier, had pointed to this Norwegian peasant leader as the chosen tool to lead poor Norway back to ignorance. In the same Aftonbladet, Carl van Bergen published an article after Grundtvig’s death, headed “Denmark in our days”. It reads: “Like the laborer in foreign countries, so here in the North the peasant turns up with pretensions of unrestricted political power.” One cannot better illustrate the differing development of the three Nordic countries during the 1800’s. Carl van Bergen continues faithful to the Gothic accent which was applied during the whole century: “These new demands (are) only a challenge for a return to the old primitive Nordic- ness … the free hereditary peasants.”

The “noble” peasant had indeed been sung about with enthusiasm, during the time of freedom and the Gustavian period in Sweden (1719-1809). In this way, he had become a literary artifact. From that position, to give him a cultural mission was a long step and obviously difficult for the Swedes to take. Carl van Bergen’s article continues to speak in this vein: “Their (the peasants’) political battle is then a cultural battle, an attack upon cultural life. The original Nordic culture – that is, barbarism – is to replace ‘the higher culture’, all of whose institutions should be abolished.”

The folkhighschool and the Nordic renaissance

There were no “poet-politicians” in Sweden, such as existed in Norway – men who sometimes played a more important role in politics than in literature. At least, they placed their literary work in the service of their political ideas.

“The return to oneself” – to use once more Geijer’s famous expression – did not in Sweden result in a break between what Bjørnson had called “the camp of the people” and “the intelligentsia”. Thus, the folkhighschool in Sweden never came to oppose the university, it never became engaged in a cultural struggle, as I have earlier maintained. “The return to oneself” in the folkhighschool and elsewhere in Sweden was fed from the traditional springs of national feeling.

The return to the hereditary peasant

The Swedish folkhighschools were created by peasants and for peasants. It is therefore not surprising that sometimes these schools were seized by enthusiasm for ˆthe peasant¨and his unique role in his country’s history. In Norrländska Korrespondenten for April 5, 1873, a folkhighschool teacher writes that it was when he studied Swedish history and statesmanship that he began to understand the significance that the peasant class had had for the country. He also thought about how most of these cultivators of the earth had been excluded from all spiritual cultivation, and he heard within himself a serious voice, which said to him: “Is it serving one’s country well, to spend all one’s life teaching grammar and logic to the children of [wealthy] city men? Go out into the country! Contribute to the education and enlightenment of our country people.”

This enthusiasm for the noble peasant is again exemplified by P. A. Gödecke, who succeeded Dr. Ålund at Herrestad in 1869, and who in the same year had accepted his “call” to attend the Scandinavian student meeting in Kristiania -where he had been a passive participant. Gödecke later became the principal of the new-built school in Närke, in 1873. There he discovered a milieu that agreed with his ideas. In a letter to Leonard Holmström he writes: “I have got a student-body which it wouldn’t be easy to match . From Engelbrekt’s and Sturarnes’ and Gustaf Vasa’s days, there shines a kind of people – miners and peasant forest- workers, whose roots are of iron. I didn’t know that kind of people before I came up here…. There lives and grows true Nordic manhood in a miner. Come up here and you’ll see how Swedes, the original Swedes, look!”

We don’t know the answer to this letter – if there was one. Holmström, who mis-trusted the exaltation in the revival district where the Önnestad school had arisen, probably distanced himself from this interest for the “noble” peasant – and to boot, the Rousseau perspective and according to Gothic tradition – which Gödecke tried to transfer to him. Certainly one couldn’t bring such ideas into the Southern Plains.

“The Baltic had no Iceland”

Meanwhile, Hvilans folkhighschool did not remain outside of the influence of the Nordic Renaissance.

A. U. Bååth (1853-1912), a minister’s son grown up in the Southern Plains, was studying classical culture at Lund University when he first came to Hvilan. Contact with the peasants there made him change his studies: he exchanged Homer for the Edda and Tacitus for Heimskringla. From 1875 onward, he became a teacher at Hvilan and tried to educate his students in the Nordic spirit. He visited in Copen-hagen in 1877-78, to deepen his Icelandic studies and there translated Njalssaga. As he progressed in this work, he sent drafts to Hvilan, where they were read aloud to the students. The school’s reports note with satisfaction that the Nordic spirit inspires the folkhighschools.

But on the other hand, Hvilans’ principals seem to have been inimical to this enthusiasm for mythology, as some Swedish visitors such as Teodor Holmberg, bore witness to from Denmark. Rector Holmström had detailed his points of view in an article series “About the Nordic folkhighschool, its origin, ideas and activity” in Nordisk Tidskrift for 1886. In the essay about the Swedish folkhighschool, he writes: “Mythological/historical instruction has never had the same significance here as in Denmark. Many conditions for it are lacking here. Grundtvig’s enormous work in that area is still largely foreign to us, it carries (if I may say so) an altogether too great aspect of Danishness to arouse an echo among the common man here. And although the Old Nordic sagas are of great interest and value for us Swedes, yet they cannot carry the same weight as for Norwegians. Our oldest history points eastward, although unfortunately we know so little about our forefathers’ dealings and behavior in the East. The Baltic had no Iceland.”

Here we have the explanation why, for Grundtvig, Sweden represented “the dark side of the North”!

A Norwegian, Lorentz Dietrichson, who had been an academic teacher in Sweden during the 1860’s and ‘70’s, and had been in close contact with the country’s cultural life, describes the origin of the Swedish folkhighschool in his memoirs, A Norwegian’s Memory of Sweden, 1902. He tries to explain why the Danish example couldn’t tempt the Swedes. “High school” made “a somewhat mixed impression….In part, the theological element in the [Danish] national character, in part the predominance which the lyrical element with folk-dance, national songs, and poetic dilettantism had, in comparison with the acquisition of solid knowledge, made the Danish form of the folkhighschool… distasteful to the Swedes…. The folkhighschool awakened suspicion because of the previous conviction that Grundtvigianism was indissolubly linked to dilettantism…. The movement took a real spurt, and from that point of view, these successful schools deserve all praise for the completely independent position they have taken, as opposed to Grundtvigian [ideas] “.

• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Denmark
• Chapter 2: Norway
• Chapter 3: Sweden
• Epilogue

by Erica Simon, 1989
Askov Højskoles Forlag
Translated by Kathryn Parke, 1998