Chapter Three
Kingo's Childhood and Youth
Thomas Kingo, the first of the great Danish hymnwriters, grew forth as a
root out of dry ground. There was nothing in the religious and secular
life of the times to foreshadow the appearance of one of the great
hymnwriters, not only of Denmark but of the world.
The latter part of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries mark
a rather barren period in the religious and cultural life of Denmark. The
spiritual ferment of the Reformation had subsided into a staid and
uniform Lutheran orthodoxy. Jesper Brochman, a bishop of Sjaelland and the
most famous theologian of that age, praised king Christian IV for "the
zeal with which from the beginning of his reign he had exerted himself to
make all his subjects think and talk alike about divine things". That the
foremost leader of the church thus should recommend an effort to impose
uniformity upon the church by governmental action proves to what extent
church life had become stagnant. Nor did such secular culture as there
was present a better picture. The Reformation had uprooted much of the
cultural life that had grown up during the long period of Catholic
supremacy, but had produced no adequate substitute. Even the once
refreshing springs of the folk-sings had dried up. Writers were
laboriously endeavoring to master the newer and more artistic forms of
poetry introduced from other countries, but when the forms had been
achieved the spirit had often fled, leaving only an empty shell. Of all
that was written during these years only one song of any consequence,
"Denmark's Lovely Fields and Meadows", has survived.
Against this bleak background the work of Kingo stands out as an amazing
achievement. Leaping all the impediments of an undeveloped language and
an equally undeveloped form, Danish poetry by one miraculous sweep
attained a perfection which later ages have scarcely surpassed.