It’s June and time to celebrate Sankt Hans (the summer solstice). Maybe we’ll light a bonfire to keep us alight all night long. That fire’s symbolic significance is to burn away our errors and omissions of the previous year. Ready to face the new year, it’s time to register for the annual Danebod Folk Meeting in Tyler, MN. Check out our website (danebodfolkmeeting.org) to see our amazing line-up of speakers and topics. This year we are hosting both an in-person meeting at Danebod in Tyler and offering a livestream option you can enjoy from your home. Please join us for what we believe will be an educational and fun-filled three and a half days of learning, singing, and fellowship, either in-person or online. See you in August!
Anita Young
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Edward Broadbridge provided several updates on Grundtvig-related projects in the latest issue of his quarterly publication, “Grundtvig Newsletter.”
Lone Kølle Martinsen’s book Den store Mand. Nye Fortællinger om Grundtvig (The Great Man: New Narratives of Grundtvig) will be released in September of this year on Grundtvig’s birthday. The new English biography of Grundtvig by Edward Broadbridge and Hans Raun Iversen is on course for publication in February 2023. The long-awaited first Chinese edition of Grundtvig’s public theology, edited by Grundtvig scholar Wen Ge, is also due out next year. A drama documentary film project about Grundtvig, which will include discussion of his contribution to the making of modern Denmark, is slowly taking shape. The film, which will be in Danish with English subtitles, has a confirmed director, a producer, and a manuscript. However, sufficient financing has yet to be secured. Any ideas or connections to potential major funding sources can be directed to Edward Broadbridge, [email protected]. With June come the bonfires of Sankt Hans Aften, so the cover photo features a statue by Erik Heide of the saint that stands near the entrance of Asminerød Church in Fredensborg, Denmark. It is also the season of summer fun and games. Athena Kildegaard calls on a memory of playing leapfrog in the poem “Ode to Frog,” which opens this issue instead of a song, unless you imagine a chorus frogs. An announcement about the Danebod Folk Meeting comes from Anita Young. The next two articles illustrate how Danish folk education has inspired individuals to open folk schools here in the United States. The continuation of the transcript from the video by Jennifer Rose Escobar tells more of the history and principles behind the school recently started by her family outside of Berea, Kentucky. A century before Jennifer traveled to Denmark for an inspiring gathering of folk educators from around the world, Olive Dame Campbell and two other women traveled to Scandinavia with the same intention of getting ideas for a folk school in Appalachia. She tells of her experience and observations in “Impressions of the People’s College of Denmark,” reprinted from a 1924 article in the monthly magazine Scandinavia, which though published in Grand Forks, ND, was “devoted to the interests of Scandinavians everywhere.” Unlike a century ago when lasting peace was imagined, with World War I considered by many to have been the “war to end all wars” and the League of Nations having been established to promote diplomacy, European countries are once again looking at the need for military defenses with the war in Ukraine uncomfortably close. In “Danish Democracy,” Hanna Broadbridge reports on the recent referendum in Denmark concerning whether to join the European Union security and defense policy. Concerns in the United States are often more about domestic issues and individual rights. With the fate of reproductive rights in mind, Rev. Ashley Dellagiacoma affirms in her sermon based on Acts 16:16-34 that it is political to preach the Gospel message of liberation. A freedom that we may take for granted is the freedom of movement. The founding of the Danish American colony in Granly, MS is predicated on this freedom as illustrated in the continuation of the narrative by Ida Larsen as she describes efforts to draw Danish folk from around the country to Mississippi. |
Editor InformationBridget Lois Jensen Archives
March 2023
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