Skibelund Krat

Facts

Where a divided country met

By Linda Kiltmøller, Mag.art. og cand.mag. i europæisk etnolgi og historie (3 stories)

Skibelund Krat became a national meeting place after the defeat in the war against Prussia and Austria in 1864. This was where pro-Danish people from the north and south of Kongeåen River met. A meeting place with seating for about 4,000 people was set out on a south-facing slope. The highlight of the year was the Constitutional meeting. The theme was always democracy and Danish patriotism. A number of memorials for people who had taken active part in the national fight for a Danish identity in Southern Jutland were erected around the meeting place and in the nearby countryside. In about 1900, two national pieces of artwork, Magnusstenen and Modersmålet, were added to the memorials.

Public place

Selected entry

Memoirs written in stone

Story written by Linda Kiltmøller

Time / Periode 1865

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Ludvig Schrøder was a frequent speaker in Skibelund Krat. The South Jutland cause was his hobby horse. As principal of Askov Residential Folk High School, he took pupils and guests with him to the meeting place. Schrøder saw the memorials, Magnusstenen and Modersmålet, as pieces of the puzzle that make up our history as a nation. He called them pages in the memoirs of Denmark": "Most are just simple fieldstone boulders, in which the name and date of birth and death are carved, but these memorials also have a far different value and importance than the impressive grave monuments we find in our graveyards, for they are pages of Denmark's memoirs, they tell the viewer a large piece of our history." (translation of an excerpt from Skibelund Foreningens Saga, printed in Tiden no. 22, 1903) "