14 kmCulture in Varde Municipality
Links here: manually linked to this place as relevant further reading.
Hodde Old School works precisely because it is so small. Here, there is not far from door to blackboard, and the room feels more like a lesson interrupted than an exhibition. Desks, teacher’s desk, blackboards, slates, schoolbooks and visual teaching aids still hold the classroom together, so you can compare old school life with today’s screens, bags and whiteboards.
Items may be touched with care, and photography is allowed. That makes the place concrete without making it grand; you stand close to the objects that otherwise so easily become mere words in the history of schooling.
The school is located very close to Hodde Church, in fact in the churchyard embankment. The location says something about a rural community where school, church, priest and teacher were closely connected, and where the teacher’s role could also extend into church life.
Everyday life in the classroom was not detached from the surrounding area either. In West Jutland, schooling could be arranged according to the rhythm of agriculture, so the children’s time at the desks did not just follow the calendar, but also the work outside.
The classroom could be used in connection with baptisms in winter, when the church was cold: the godmother and the child could wait in the warm classroom before they had to go into the church. Here, the building’s location becomes more than practical; it shows how closely everyday life and church life lay side by side.
At Hodde Old School, the cold is almost part of the story. In winter, the classroom was heated by a single stove, and peat was used as fuel.
During the winter of 1834-35, some of the oldest schoolgirls had to put peat into the tile stove between lessons. The teacher’s own room was so difficult to heat that in the first years it was mostly used in summer.