A CENTURY OF GYMNASTICS
We are together hilarious your personal cheerleaders 150 pairs of flip flops in the dining room ... a community the first of our kind just like you Ollerup
Ollerup started with gymnastics. Over many generations, we have evolved to be a meeting point, a community and a guide for the young people we live with and for – but we have never forgotten where we came from.
What is Ollerup?
Ollerup is the first of its kind. Although Grundtvig started the first folk high school long before we came around, Ollerup was the first to be founded on love of gymnastics. Created in 1920 by the charismatic and eccentric Niels Bukh (1880-1950), the purpose was to create a gymnastics college, which without compromising the popular educational tradition should focus on sports and on educating leaders for the voluntary association life. Gymnastics, life information and association life have been Ollerup’s most important pillars – and even though we’ve seen a lot of water pass under our bridge in the last 100 years, it’s still our purpose.
It’s still, today, the school’s life task to unite sports, society and democracy and to form and educate students to be both athletes and fellow citizens. To bring young people together and through sport and community make them wiser about themselves, about each other and about democracy. It may sound a bit airy, but it really isn’t. It is, like Ollerup himself, a fusion of living history, ambitions and hopes for the future. Some of our buildings are many generations old, but in others the paint hasn’t even dried yet – because that’s just how Ollerup is.
Although our basis is gymnastics, Ollerup is built on and developed by each individual student who breathes life into our old – but also very young – folk high school.
Meet some of our students and staff here:
