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People often ask: what is a folk school? One way to answer that is to trace the folk school to its origins in Denmark in the 19th century.

Join Dr. Brad Busbee to find out where the idea came from, how the original Danish schools scaled, and who the people were that made it happen.

Brad Busbee is a professor and chair of the English Department at Samford University, where he studies medieval Germanic and modern Scandinavian literatures. He spent 2003–04 in Denmark on a Fulbright Fellowship and has spent many years studying N.F.S. Grundtvig, the Lutheran pastor, poet, and historian who gave birth to the folk school idea that his followers then put into practice. He co-edits Grundtvig-Studier, an international journal on Grundtvig, and in 2018 led an international symposium in London on Grundtvig’s influence around the world.

Dr. Busbee’s panel last fall on folk schools at Samford also provided the impetus for the creation of the organizing committee of your very own Iron Hills Folk School.