Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig

GRUNDTVIG, Nicolai Frederik Severin. b. Udby, 8 September 1783; d. Copenhagen, 2 September 1872. He was born in a small village in South Zealand, where his father had been priest since 1778. The small boy remembered news of the revolution in France arriving in the village in 1789, but he seems to have been more impressed in the previous year (when he was five years old) by the news that the Russian troops on the Black Sea coast were advancing south and hoped to be in Constantinople by Easter: ‘Constantinople at Easter’ sounded to him like new life from the dead. Already, at five, he was fascinated by Church history, and by all things Greek. Grundtvig’s long life was at times a tumultuous...