Global View Speaker: Edward Broadbridge

September 29, 2023

Edward Broadbridge will serve as the first Global Vision Speaker of the academic year. His address will take place on October 16 at 3:00 p.m. in the Speed Lyceum, Student Center. This event is sponsored by the Ravenholt Endowment.

N.F.S. Grundtvig: Denmark’s Catalyst

It was the ideas of the Danish educator N.F.S. Grundtvig that helped to build the foundations of Grand View University, the only Danish-founded university in the United States. Freedom of thought, interaction between staff and student, learning for life, and lifelong learning were among the ideas that Grundtvig promoted in the middle of the 19th century to educate the Danish people into taking charge of their own affairs in their growing democracy. In a life that lasted 88 years Pastor Grundtvig also had three wives, five children (the last when he was 76 with a wife 40 years his junior), and wrote 1,500 hymns for the Danish Church.

Edward Broadbridge (b. London 1944) moved to Denmark in 1967, learned its language and the culture, and became fascinated by Grundtvig’s contribution to his country‘s welfare and happiness, summed up in phrases like ‘Human comes first, and Christian next’, and ‘Freedom our watchword must be in the North’. In a country where ‘Few are too rich and still fewer too poor’.

For the last 15 years Edward Broadbridge has been translating Grundtvig’s works into 6 volumes in English. Since his last visit to Grand View in 2015 he has kept in touch with the university and is delighted to make a return visit with his new illustrated biography of Grundtvig: Denmark’s Catalyst, which will be available for purchase at a discount price on the day. 

Grand View's celebration of "Global Vision" was created to offer students, faculty and staff and the community opportunities to encounter belief systems, heritages and perspectives that differ from our own. The goal is to develop a deeper understanding of others, ourselves and our relationship to the world.