Troels Frederik Troels-Lund (5 September 1840 – 12 February 1921) was a Danish historian.

Biography

Lund was born in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...

. He was the youngest son of Henrik Ferdinand Lund,

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...

’s Nephew. Henrik Ferdinand was the brother of the naturalist

Peter Wilhelm Lund Peter Wilhelm Lund (14 June 1801 – 25 May 1880) was a Danish paleontologist, zoologist, and archeologist. He spent most of his life working and living in Brazil. He is considered the father of Brazilian paleontology as well as archaeology. He ...

. He entered the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

in 1858. After studying theology for a while he abandoned it for the study of history. From 1870-1875 he was assistant at the Danish . He was also appointed

historiographer royal Historiographer Royal is the title of an appointment as official chronicler or historian of a court or monarch. It was initially particularly associated with the French monarchy, where the post existed from at least 1550, but in the later 16th and 1 ...

to the king of Denmark and Comptroller of the Order of the Dannebrog. Later, he was an instructor in history at the military school at Copenhagen. In 1888 he was made full professor of history, and produced many profound volumes mostly devoted to the subject of Scandinavian history during the sixteenth century.''Information Quarterly'', Volume 1 R.R. Bowker, 1915 January 1916 p. 10 ''Information Annual'' reports Troels Lund as the winner of the

Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

for 1915, sharing the prize with three others, however the Nobel website only lists one recipient for that year, not Lund.

Colleagues

Lund nominated

Georg Brandes Georg Morris Cohen Brandes (4 February 1842 – 19 February 1927) was a Danish critic and scholar who greatly influenced Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind ...

for the Nobel Prize several times.

Kierkegaard

In 1913 a bust of Søren Kierkegaard was proposed. When the sculptor, Rikard Magnussen, proposed the idea to Lund, then in his eighties, he didn't support the proposal, he is quoted as saying, "But didn't you know what he was like? Soren Kierkegaard was a hunchback." In the early 1900s biographers were interested in finding out what Kierkegaard was like on the outside. Kierkegaard also wrote much about Socrates. He related different stories about Kierkegaard. One story described Kierkegaard's playfulness: "He ierkegaardwas an unseen witness to a conversation between two poorhouse inmates. The first said: "It’s the devil that one never is happy." The other: "Nonsense! What’s happiness?" The first: "I would be if an angel dropped down from heaven and gave me a ‘blue one.’" This Kierkegaard could not resist. Ho took a five-dollar note (a "blue one") from his purse, stepped up, presented it with a deep bow, and disappeared without saying a word." In 1854 he sat in on discussions between his mother, Anna Kathrine, and Kierkegaard about whether or not Mynster was a "real Christian or not", he was 16 years old at the time. He visited Kierkegaard in the hospital and was a witness to his burial. According to Lund, Kierkegaard spent half of his fortune on publishing his own works, he refused to accept interest on his money "on Old Testament grounds", and he also gave much of his money to the poor. Kierkegaard says the same: "I almost never made a visit, and at home the rule was strictly observed to receive no one except the poor who came to seek help."''Point of View'', Lowrie, p. 50

Works

Lund's first work, which appeared in 1871, an erudite biography of

Socrates Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no t ...

, gave him a great reputation among continental scholars. His next important work, ''Historiske Skitser'', did not appear until 1876, but after that time his activity was stupendous. In 1879 the first volume of his ''Danmarks og Norges Historie i Slutningen of det Xvi. Aarhundrede'', a history of daily life in Denmark and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

at the close of the 16th century, was published. His work said little about kings, armies and governments, but instead concentrated attention on the lives of the ordinary men and women of the age with which he deals. He used these common people to illustrate a vast body of documents previously neglected by the official historians.

List

*''Paa Vandring'', 1867 (under pseudonym Poul Vedel) *''Historiske Skitser - Efter utrykte Kilder'', 1876 *''Mogens Heinesøn - Et tidsbillede fra det 16 Aarhundrede'', 1877 *''Dagligt Liv i Norden i det sekstende Aarhundrede I-XIV'', 1879-1901 (First edition under title ''Danmark og Norges Historie i Slutningen af det 16de Aarhundrede'' — "History of Denmark and Norway to the End of the Sixteenth Century") *''Om Danmarks Forsvar'', 1880 *''Preussens fald og Genoprejsning'', 1883 *''Om Danmarks Neutralitet'', 1886 *''Christian den Fjerdes Skib paa Skanderborg Sø I-II'', 1893 *''Livsbelysning'', 1899 *''Sundhedsbegreber i Norden i det 16de Aarhundrede'', 1900 *''Peder Oxe'', 1906 *''De tre Nordiske Brødrefolk'', 1906 *''Nye Tanker i det 16de Aarhundrede'', 1909 *''Historiske Fortællinger - Tider og Tanker I-IV'', 1910–1912 *''Bakkehus og Solbjerg - Træk af et nyt Livssyns Udvikling i Norden I-III'', 1920–1922 *''Et Liv - Barndom og Ungdom'', 1924

References

Sources

* ''Kierkegaard The Cripple'', by Theodor Haecker, translated by C. Vasn O. Bruyn, With and Introduction by A. Dru, Published 1950 by the Philosophical Library Inc. * ''Soren Kierkegaard, A Biography'', by Johannes Hohlenberg, Translated by T.H. Croxall, Pantheon Books 1954 * ''Kierkegaard,'' by Josiah Thompson, Alfred A. Knopf, 1973 * *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lund, Troels Frederik 1840 births 1921 deaths 19th-century Danish historians 20th-century Danish historians