Windmills, Butter, and Bacon: The Circulation of Scientific Knowledge among Grundtvigians in the Decades around 1900

In spite of ideological concerns due to N.F.S. Grundtvig’s reservations about the natural sciences and the traditional education of his day, the Grundtvigian movement and, especially, teachers at the People’s High Schools and the agricultural schools played an important role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the rural population in the decades around 1900. The diffusion of technological innovations such as a decentralized electricity supply system and an automatic cream separator for cooperative dairies had a profound and lasting impact on the development of modern Denmark. Hence, the Grundtvigian movement contributed not only to political and cultural nation building but also to technological modernization and economic growth in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Denmark.