Soren Kierkegaard

constitutes the genuine tone of a hymn....Grundtvig is, was, and will
remain a noisemaker. Even in eternity I will find him unpleasant. It is not
as if Grundtvig had not undergone anything, of course he has, but always
noisily. Then he is stopped on his way by something or other, and he makes
a scene like a railroad train that has a collision.” It is here that Kierkegaard
calls Grundtvig a “yodeling fellow” and a “bellowing blacksmith,” who as
a writer of hymns is only “available for service outside his party if the public
will pay the bill for having him shaved.”
Grundtvig was not the only threat to the inner peace of the individual
churchgoer. When church personnel passed around the collection plates
during the sermon it was similarly destructive of the general devotional
atmosphere. On some Sundays no fewer than seven separate wandering
collection plates made their way around the church, snapping up small coins
from the churchgoers in support of the fire department, of the bread and
wine for communion, the choir school, the chaplain, the poor, the deaf and
dumb, the lying-in hospital, Helsingør Hospital, Møn Prison, and countless
other noble causes. Everyone was irritated by this, including Kierkegaard,
who included a brief, ironical mention of the situation inWorks of Love, but
because of economic considerations Bishop Mynster ignored a number of
petitions from the city council (who wanted to see the practice abolished,
or at least consigned to some time other than right in the middle of the
pastor’s sermon) and continued to permit the collection plates to circulate.
In other respects, however, there was no overwhelming interest in church
affairs. Attendance at services was modest and holy days were not observed.
On Sundays, merchants put a board or a shutter over the window panes in
the doors to their shops, which meant they were “shuttered” and in compli-
ance with the law—and they went right on doing business.
Finally, among the many good reasons not to go to church was the bone-
chilling cold that characterized the winter season and made piety a danger-
ous business. Thus in 1841, no fewer than eighteen pastors in Copenhagen
asked to have their churches heated, but a proposed trial arrangement for
Holy Spirit Church, in which six tiled stoves would have been installed—
and which a watchmaker named Ju ̈rgensen was willing to pay for—was
opposed by experts from the Polytechnic College who feared the effect of
localized heat and were also concerned about the “filth” that the stoves
would inevitably generate. It was proposed that heating be installed under
the floor instead, but this would cost astronomical sums and therefore noth-
ing ever came of it.
And so people continued to freeze. Or they found something warmer to
do on a Sunday morning.