Grundtvig as a Danish Contribution to World Culture

Grundtvig som et dansk bidrag til verdens kulturAf Flemming Lundgreen-Nielse

Grundtvigs vej til Saxo

This article documents Grundtvig’s path to the works of Saxo Grammaticusfrom around 1787, when he was taught to read by his strongwilledmother, and until departure from Saxo after completing his translationof Saxo’s chronicle in 1823. An overview of this period focuses onthe significant dates, book titles, and other points of interest that mark hisinterest in the medieval clerical scribe’s work. Attention then turns to thefact that, after 1823, Grundtvig never seriously returned to study of Saxo’sideas, nor did he ever try to reproduce his silver age Roman style in theDanish language. For a very short while, Grundtvig thought about butnever followed through on a continuation of a history of Denmark fromwhere Saxo stopped (viz. in 1186). Though Grundtvig’s preoccupationwith Saxo lasted for the rest of his life, he preferred the Icelandic tongueinstead of Latin and believed that Norse mythology was a more fertilefield than Latin for discoveries about the national history of the Danes.The present survey of these key points in how Grundtvig viewed andevaluated Saxo also supplements previous scholarly treatments of stylisticlinguisticanalyses of Grundtvig’s youth translation of Saxo

»Rød og hvid i Billedsalen.« Grundtvigs døds- og mindedigte I

“Red and White in the Picture Gallery” Grundtvig’s memorial poems (I)By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenThe author sets out to examine six of Gr.’s memorial poems viewed as a particular literary genre within Gr.’s writings. The first part of the essay treats three poems. “My Mother” (1822) demonstrates how Gr. is able to turn his private grief for his mother’s death into hope for a future renewal of Danish history, poetry and Christianity, not least through Gr.’s own promised efforts. Poetically the poem relies principally on spiritual interpretations and ambiguous considerations of different details around his mother’s death and burial. “The Birthday (at Gisselfeld, June 11.)” (1823) commemorates Gr.’s supposed patron of literature, Count C.C.S. Danneskiold-Samsøe. The poem is shown to be effective in attaching the manor and park to elements of old Norse mythology, but it is pointed out that in the end the poem fails to bring solace to the widow and her daughters and hardly even convinces the poet himself, the reason being Gr.’s refusal to acknowledge the death of Danneskiold. Finally in “Jens Baggesen” (1826) Grundtvig as an honest enemy praises and critically characterizes his old opponent and ally, Jens Baggesen. Baggesen’s unfortunate attraction to German language and literature is in Gr.’s opinion more than counterbalanced by his essentially Danish childlike tone, cunning and innocent at the same time, and can be conceived of as evidence of a spiritual attitude to life that may secure Baggesen a revival and a part in the future national life in Scandinavia.The second part of the paper will be published in the 1981 volume

Sjæleøje-Stavnen eller Sjæle-Færge-Stavnen? En tesktkritisk drøftelse

Soul-Eye-Prow or Soul-Ferry-Prow?By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenGrundtvig’s last completed poem .Old Enough I Now Have Grown. (1872) in stanza 3 presents a word that has not as of yet been deciphered with absolute certainty. At the first publication of the poem in 1880 by his son Svend it was given as »Sjæleøje-Stavnen« (literally: Soul-Eye-Prow), from 1964 on the reading .Sj.le-Færge-Stavnen. (literally: Soul-Ferry-Prow) has been suggested. The paper endeavours to settle this philological dispute. Firstly various renditions of the word through more than one century’s prints and reprints are registered, with specific regard to the (neglected) accuracy of spelling. Secondly the possible reading Soul-Eye- is verified as part of the metaphors of Danish Romanticism (found in B.S. Ingemann and in a hymn by Grundtvig), but due to lack of logical and metaphorical coherence the combination of the concrete word eye and the equally concrete word prow is rejected as against Grundtvig’s general practice in creating compounds.Contrarily Soul-Ferry- does make fine sense as part of an image of Charon’s boat and effortlessly combines with Prow. Thirdly the actual characters and strokes in the relevant line of Grundtvig’s manuscript are examined in minute details. The main problem is that Grundtvig because of failing eye-sight sometimes wrote words or letters with his steel pen without realising that he had run out of ink. The final result of this examination implies that the reading »Færge« (Ferry) seems the only possible one considering the number and kind of letters between the hyphens in the middle constituent of the trinomial compound. It is mentioned that in a scrutiny the small-scale photographic reproduction of the manuscript in Grundtvig’s Sang-Værk, vol. 6, 1964, cannot serve as a substitute for Grundtvig’s manuscript (in the Grundtvig Archive, The Royal Library, Copenhagen); neither can a contemporary handwritten copy

Grundtvig i guldalderens København

Grundtvig and Golden Age CopenhagenBy Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenThe article has originally been given as a public lecture at the University of Copenhagen during the Golden Days in Copenhagen festival in September 1994. By way of introduction the question is posed to which extent Grundtvig belongs to the Golden Age period in Danish cultural and artistic life. Though he lived in the capital for 65 years, he never orientated himself towards the places that interested most other educated Copenhageners. The University rejected his applications for a professorate, and he in return vehemently attacked the dead learning of the institution. He hardly ever went to the Cathedral or other of the city churches, since he was at odds with most of the clergy. The art of acting he considered to be organized hypocrisy and accordingly avoided the Royal Theatre. He had good relations to the Kings (and Queens!), but did not involve himself in the affairs of the Royal Court. Unlike most contemporary writers and artists, he never took the Grand Tour of the Continent, in fact apart from four journeys to England (1829-31 and 1843) and one to Norway (1851), he stayed at home in his study, travelling in time through his comprehensive readings rather than in actual space. As he grew older, he got quite popular among his younger followers and ended up becoming one of the tourist attractions of the city, as witnessed 1872 by the young English poet Edmund Gosse briefly before Grundtvig’s demise.Grundtvig cared little for the kind of elite culture that dominated Copenhagen for most of his life. Though singing of national ballads was inaugurated during his 1838 lectures and since then has been a part of Danish tradition for public meetings, he had no ear for music at all and never communicated with the fine composers who set music to his texts. Sculpture and painting he rejected as base materialistic arts, only acknowledging the Danish sculptor of European fame, Bertel Thorvaldsen, because of his unassuming and genial personality, not on account of his reliefs and statues. Even his fellow poets he in general criticized harshly, excepting a few works by B.S. Ingemann. On the whole he did not think that, the first third of the 19th century constituted any Golden Age: it was a period filled with drowsiness and shallow entertainment, devoid of anything but sensualistic or even materialistic pleasures.Inspired by writers from Classical Greece and Rome, older humanists such as professor K.L. Rahbek nourished a hopeless longing for a lost Golden Age. Modem romanticists, however, such as the philosopher Henrich Steffens, the poet Adam Oehlenschl.ger and the above mentioned Thorvaldsen strove to regain or recreate a true Golden Age in the near future. Spurred on by Norse mythology as well as by his Christian belief, Grundtvig from around 1824 increasingly came to share this attitude. He distinguished between Guld-Alder (Golden Age) as a thing of the past, and Gylden-Aar (literally: Golden Year) as a state of earthly and heavenly happiness soon to be achieved or even existing in the present moment-the word refers to the Biblical Year of Jubilee as rendered in a medieval Danish translation of the Old Testament. Unfortunately no all-encompassing examination of Grundtvig’s use of these terms has been executed, but from his secular poetry a series of instances are given in the following, starting with a somewhat overlooked poem called »Gylden-Aaret« from January 1834, celebrating three moments in the life of King Frederik VI: his recovery from a serious illness in Schleswig and his triumphant return to Copenhagen in August 1833, hisbirthday in January 1834 and his 50 years’ jubilee as a ruler in the following April. The modem Gylden-Aar is defined as happiness for all of the people through enlightenment about life, procured by the king and all the fine poets surrounding him. Thus Grundtvig gives a unique priority to the art of poetry. No matter what occurred to Denmark in the rest of Grundtvig’s life-time, he managed to interpret the events as pains of child-birth heralding the approaching Gylden-Aar rather than as death throes. Instead of confining himself to the refined small-scale topics of most contemporary poets, he time and again energetically prophecied about the expected Gylden-Aar as a solid historical fact. In a period where elitist art according to the doctrines of romantic poetics was literally idolized, he maintained that the highest form of art consists in organizing society and the lives of common people so that all innate talents and latent possibilities are being developed in the due course of time. He believes this to be happening under the benevolent reign of the present Danish kings, among others things because the Danes have been reared to pay attention to each other and are generally uninterested in pursuing power and glory, honour and greatness. Grundtvig deduces this attitude partly from the role played by the peasants in the formation of the modem Danish national character, partly from the influence of the exeptionally loving, loveable and lovely Danish womanhood. Even the geographical position of Copenhagen between the Sound (the scene of the heroic battle against Lord Nelson in 1801) and the impressive beeches of Charlottenlund Forest (a beautiful and peaceful idyll of nature) becomes symbolic of Denmark’s state of mind, demonstrating a harmony between nature and history, reality and dream, simplicity and majesty, people and royalty. Though Grundtvig remained much of an outsider in Golden Age Copenhagen, his interest in the common citizen, in family and home and everyday life, relates him to the then current concept of ’cozy’ (hyggelig) Biedermeier art after all. Because of his view of universal history, he was able to give depth and significance even to the smallest and most trivial elements in his environment. Grundtvig simply could not help converting the exclusive Golden Age of the poets and artists into a fruitful Gylden-Aar for the whole nation

N.F.S. Grundtvig: Lidet om Saxo og Snorro, 1809.

Tekstkritisk og kommenteret udgav

»Odin og Saga« genfundet. En Grundtvig-tekst fra 1810

‘Odin and Saga’ Rediscovered. A Grundtvig manuscript from 1810published by Flemming Lundgreen-Nielsen.‘Odin and Saga’ was the name of a journal that never saw the light. The text published here is the one for which subscriptions were invited. Steen Johansen regretted its loss in his Bibliography of the Works of N.F.S. Grundtvig (vol I p. 50 and vol IV p. 11). It was found in 10 copies amongst the papers left by F.C. Sibbern and is here printed with an introduction and notes. The plan was to publish a journal of philosophy, poetry and history with 4 issues annually each of 190 pages. Sibbern was to contribute a prizewinning essay on the principle and nature of philosophy and another essay on the principle behind a philosophical ‘doctrine of happiness’ (eudaimonism). In addition there was to be ‘A historical character sketch of Schiller as poet’, ‘An inquiry into the freedom of the human soul’ and an essay ‘Concerning the moral principle’, the authors of which were not named.Lundgreen-Nielsen assumes that Sibbern and Grundtvig have drafted the journal together but finds that the finished product bears rather Grundtvig’s stamp in its mode of expression. History and poetry are considered from a universal, historical angle, and the section on philosophy does not touch on the relationship between that particular science and Christianity or theology. Grundtvig has not yet become the severe judge of the life of the spirit with a Bible in his hand. Lundgreen-Nielsen attributes the only limited interest in the project to its failure to make its mark as part of the national religious revival. The journal ‘Danne-Virke’ 1816- 19, on the other hand, gathered its diversified contents around the concept of Danishness, most likely owing to Grundtvig’s own development between 1810-20

N. F. S. Grundtvig: Rim-Brev til Nordiske Paarørende, 1832. Tekstkritisk og kommenteret udgave

N. F. S. Grundtvig: “Rim-Brev til Nordiske Paarørende”, 1832. Tekstkritisk og kommenteret udgave[N. F. S. Grundtvig: Rhymed Epistle to the Norse Kinsmen ”, 1832. Critical and annotated edition]By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenGrundtvig’s “Rhymed Epistle to the Norse Kinsmen” (258 verses), published as a prologue to Norse Mythology or The Language of Myth, 1832, is reprinted in a densely annotated version, with attention being given to manuscripts in the Grundtvig Archive and statements in Grundtvig’s other writings as well as to earlier scholarly treatments. Emphasis is placed on the extent to which Grundtvig employs ambiguous imagery with a multitude of mythological details which may be categorised according as they derive from medieval sources such as The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, poems of The Elder Edda and The Danish Chronicle by Saxo. In a Postscript, the text as a whole is located in Grundtvig’s secular writings in exactly that period when he coins the phrase “First a Man, then a Christian”, thus heralding a humanistic approach to an education for citizenship and practical everyday life. It is among numerous other things demonstrated that the still frequently quoted lines about freedom for Loki as well as for Thor and about struggle and competition historically viewed embody meanings different from those routinely assumed by modem users

Tilføjelse til “Grundtvig og censuren” i Grundtvig-Studier 2007

Tilføjelse til “Grundtvig og censuren ” i Grundtvig-Studier 2007[Supplement to “Grundtvig and censorship ” in Grundtvig-Studier 2007]By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenThe supplement to “Grundtvig and censorship” in Grundtvig-Studier 2007 (44-90; 281) presents the discovery that Grundtvig’s idea from 1831 about an age limit for young writers may have been influenced by Ludvig Holberg’s description of academic restrictions in the fictitious state of Potu in his Latin novel Niels Kliim, 1741, chapter 8, recycled in his essay Epistle No. 395, 1750. A polite protest against Holberg by C. B. Tullin was published posthumously in 1773, emphasising the freedom of printing and the advantage of competition among writers. Grundtvig regrets his strange elitist conception already in 1836, but the point may be that he has in fact been inspired to some of his discussions on education and freedom of speech and printing by leading writers from the Danish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century in spite of his often proclaimed general dissociation from that period

Grundtvig og censuren

Grundtvig og censuren[Grundtvig and censorship]By Flemming Lundgreen-NielsenFor forty-six years of his life Grundtvig was engaged in a struggle for freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Over this period his attitude gradually changed. At the age of 21, he wanted not to abolish but to update the rigid and stem decree on the issue dating from 1799, his idea being that educated and scholarly orientated writers could serve as counsellors for the authorities instead of censors appointed by the police or by the Danish Chancellery (Ministry of the Interior).During a long middle period of his career as an author he time and again discussed and suggested models for setting up semi-official literary courts outside the normal court system, which could secure and improve the freedom of Danish writers and poets to no detriment of Danish society as such. In a lost libel suit in 1826 Grundtvig incurred life-long personal censorship which ran until 1837, when a revision of the relevant legal paragraph was realized. As a 67-year-old member of the first Danish democratic parliament, Grundtvig in 1850 advocated freedom of the press and of speech with as few limitations as possible. His winding way to this conclusion is followed through a series of his own texts with particular attention to two sources which have been overlooked by Grundtvig scholars, namely the censor suppressed third part of an essay on the freedom of religion (printed 1827, but not published until 1866) and a pamphlet issued in 1845 but never reprinted, opposing a proposed revision (1844) of the 1799 press ordinance. In the latter case, references to fragmentary manuscripts not included in Grundtvig’s final argumentation are added