Danebod (pronounced "DAHN-a-bo", or "DAN-a-bo") is a historic district at the south edge of the railway town of Tyler in southwestern Minnesota. Founded in 1885 by Danish Evangelical Lutherans led by Rev. Hans Jørgen Pedersen (1851–1905), the district comprises a group of buildings dating back to 1888 from Minnesota's oldest Danish immigrant settlement. Danebod remains until this day a predominantly Danish Lutheran, close-knit religious community. An annual celebration named Æbleskiver Days, held on the fourth weekend of July, celebrates Danish heritage and culture and includes a parade that goes down the town's main street with floats that are made by the various Danebod neighborhoods.
On the basis of its cultural and architectural significance, four buildings from Danebod were added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1975 as the "Danebod Historic Complex".
Etymology
The name "Danebod" honors Denmark's first queen, Queen Thyra Danebod, the consort of tenth-century Danish king Gorm the Old. Queen Thyra is recorded in medieval accounts to have directed the building of the Danevirke, a defensive earthwork across Jutland as protection against foes to the south. Due to her importance and good policies, she was given the name Danebod, which can be variously translated as "one who mends, comforts, or saves the Danes".
History
The native inhabitants of the area which later became Danebod were the Dakota Sioux people.
Establishment
On September 8, 1872, two Danish pioneer pastors, Adam Dan and Rasmus Andersen, established a small organization in Neenah, Wisconsin, which later became the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. At one of the churches' conventions in Clinton, Iowa, in 1884, the Danish farmer Rasmus Hansen of Elk Horn, Iowa, suggested that "the Danish Church should help all the families living around in cities, who would prefer living in the countryside, where they could find a fitting spot for a Danish colony." A committee was appointed for the purpose of finding a piece of land for the scattered Danish immigrants to settle. The committee consisted of the Grundtvigian Evangelical-Lutheran pastors F. L. Grundtvig (the son of N. F. S. Grundtvig), Kristian Anker, Rasmus Hansen, Jens C. Kjær, and C. Bruhn. This committee soon made arrangements with Winona and the St. Peter Railroad Company to purchase of land in the southeastern part of Lincoln County, Minnesota. An agreement with the land agent, A. Bojsen, stipulated that for three years this land was to be sold only to Danish people. The land was rolling prairie by the hills of Buffalo Ridge, just south of the community of Tyler, Minnesota. By June 27, 1885, seventy settlers from various states, towns, and communities had made the area their home.
The pioneer settlers were all Grundtvigians; a faction within the Danish National Church. The Grundtvigians represented a nationalistic and liberal religious tradition, in staunch contrast to pietists and fundamentalists in the Church Association for the Inner Mission in Denmark. Grundtvigians believed in celebrating life, but they lived for the present, and were often nicknamed "Happy Danes". While salvation was the gift of Christianity, being saved was not a focus. The Bible was the Holy Book, but was not to be taken literally, and the Apostles' Creed rather than the Bible was their source of Christianity. Grundtvigians were also nationalists who wanted to "rewaken the Danes in appreciation of their identity", and its founder, Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig, is quoted for his writing: "first a Dane and then a Christian" in 1848. The Grundtvigians stressed four elects of a "true people": a common land, a common language, a common history and forefathers, and common culture through songs, folk dancing, language, cuisine, etc. Grundtvigians established Danebod to "save the Danes from total Americanization", and the colony's only written and spoken language remained Danish for several decades after its establishment. On Sunday, June 28, 1885, the pioneers arranged a festival to celebrate the new colony. The population grew rapidly in the early 1890s, and by the year 1895, 222 people lived in the Danish Colony of Danebod.