inger Balle, the formerly mentioned bishop of Sjaelland, was
a brother-in-law of Johan Grundtvig; Cathrine Grundtvig's brother, Dr.
Johan Frederik Bang, was a well-known professor of medicine and the
stepfather of Jacob Peter Mynster; and her younger sister, Susanna
Kristine Steffens, was the mother of Henrik Steffens, a professor at the
universities of Halle and Breslau, a friend of Goethe and Schiller, and a
leader of the early Romantic movement, both in Germany and Denmark.

Cathrine Grundtvig bore her husband five children, of whom Nicolaj was
the youngest. But even with such a large household to manage, she found
time to supervise the early schooling of her youngest son. She taught him
to read, told him the sagas of his people and gave him his first lessons
in the history and literature, both of his own and of other nations.

It was a period of stirring events. Wars and revolutions raged in many
parts of Europe. And these events were eagerly followed and discussed in
the parsonage. Listening to his elders, Grundtvig saw, as it were,
history in its making and acquired an interest in the subject that
produced rich fruits in later years. The wholesome Christian life of his
home and the devotional spirit of the services in his father's church
also made a deep impression upon him, an impression that even the
scepticism of his youth could not eradicate.

But his happy childhood years ended all too quickly. At the age of nine
he left his home to continue his studies under a former tutor, Pastor L.
Feld of Thyregod, a country parish in Jylland. There he spent six lonely
but quite fruitful years, receiving among other things a solid training
in the classical languages. In 1798, he completed his studies with Rev.
Feld and enrolled in the Latin school at Aarhus, the principal city of
Jylland. But the change proved most unfortunate for young Grundtvig.
Under the wise and kindly guidance of Rev. Feld he had preserved the
wholesome, eager spirit of his childhood, but the lifeless teaching, the
compulsory religious exercises and the whole spiritless atmosphere of his
new school soon changed him into an indifferent, sophisticated and
self-satisfied cynic with little interest in his studies, and none at all
in religion.

At the completion of his course, however, this attitude did not deter him
from enrolling at the University of Copenhagen with the intention of
studying for the ministry. A university education was then considered