From shepherd to member of the first parliament

An intrepid young man arrived in the Jelling region during the 1820s. His origins were in West Jutland where he had grown up in a family of smiths.

As a boy, he had tended sheep, and as a youth, he set out as a pedlar in the countryside. At the end of the 1820s, he met and married Ane Mette Jensdatter from Sandvad farm and settled there with her. Anders Hermansen was the name of the young man, and in the course time, he was to leave his mark both in local and national affairs.

In 1849, he was part of the Constitutional Assembly and was voted into Denmark’s first parliament. As an 82-year old, Anders Hermansen fathered his last child (with his second wife), therefore, it has been possible to trace a grandchild, who in the spring of 2014 visited the archive in Jelling. He brought with him a large number of private letters written to Anders Hermansen who died in 1889.

The letters provide a fascinating glimpse into the life of someone special who was involved in the creation of the Danish Constitution, a politician’s life in the first years of democracy, a life as a father with children who emigrated to the USA, and much more. A veritable treasure for the archive.
The archive contains a large correspondence between Anders Hermansen and his wife Ane Mette. She had to manage the farm alone in the years leading to the creation of the Constitution and when the First Schleswig War (i.e. the Three-Years War 1848-1852) broke out. Thus, we obtain a highly personal account of what it meant for a family to be directly involved in one of the most significant landmarks in the history of Danish democracy. Moreover, the letters also recount the costs borne by the wife left behind at home.
A group of volunteers at Jelling Archive have spent many months transcribing the letters and systematically cataloguing them, so they are easily accessible to all who would be interested in this part of Denmark’s history or even specifically in the Jelling area.

A small article was published in the yearbook Svundne Tider in 2009 by Anders P. Nørgaard with the title, “Barsk hjemkomst fra grundlovsarbejde - om lokale folk i den grundlovsgivende forsamling” (A rough homecoming from working on the Constitution - on local people in the Founding Assembly).

You can see images of the farm that Anders Hermansen left for a period in favour of working on the Constitution in Copenhagen by navigating to the related catalogue entries.