ed and unprepared to receive it? If it could not, was not a folk
awakening a necessary preparation for a Christian?

Under the spur of this question he undertook the translation of the sagas
and developed his now widely recognized ideas of folk life and folk
education, which later were embodied in the Grundtvigian folk schools.
The first of these schools was opened at Roedding, Slesvig in 1844. The
war between Denmark and Germany from 1848 to 1850 delayed the
establishment of other similar schools. But in 1851, Christian Kold, the
man who more than any other realized Grundtvig's idea of a school for
life--as the folk schools were frequently called--opened his first school
at Ryslinge, Fyn. From there the movement spread rapidly not only to all
parts of Denmark but also to Norway, Finland and Sweden. The latter
country now has more schools of the Grundtvigian type than Denmark, and
Norway and Finland have about have as many.[11]

To extend the influence of the movement lecture societies, reading
circles, gymnastic societies, choral groups and the like were organized
in almost every parish of Denmark. Thus before Grundtvig died, he had the
satisfaction of seeing his work bear fruit in one of the most vital folk
and educational movements of Scandinavia, a movement which has made a
tremendous imprint upon all phases of life in the Northern countries and
which today is spreading to many other parts of the world.

Grundtvig held that the life of a nation, Christian as well as national,
never rose above the real culture of its common people. To be real, a
culture had to be national, had to be based on a people's natural
characteristics and developed in accordance with native history and
traditions. The aim of all true folk-education was the awakening and
enrichment of life and not a mere mental or practical training. The
natural means for the attainment of this aim was a living presentation of
a people's own cultural heritage, their native tradition, history,
literature and folk life. But in all cases the medium of this
presentation was the living, that is the spoken word by men and women who
were themselves spiritually alive. Christianity, in his opinion, had not
come to destroy but to cleanse and vivify the folk life of a people, and,
since the latter was the soil in which the former had to grow, the
fruitfulness of both demanded a living inter-action so that national life
might become Christian and Christianity national.