About This Episode
"Portalen åbner i dag, Sankthansaften, 23. juni: Helligkilder" ("The portal opens today, Midsummer Eve, 23 June: Holy Springs") is an episode of Obscuritas, a Danish podcast from Vores Tid, the media house of the National Museum of Denmark. It explores the place of Denmark's holy springs in folk belief, and in particular why the sick and the dying once travelled to them on Sankthansaften — Midsummer Eve, 23 June.
According to tradition, the power of the springs reached its peak on that single night. Right up until the end of the 1800s, people suffering from rashes, rheumatism or serious eye diseases queued to wash themselves in the water or to drink from it, in the hope that the spring would do what no doctor could.
At the centre of the episode is the story of Mads, a desperate father who brings his sick son to Knevle Kilde, a spring in North Zealand, believing that the water can heal the boy's deformed bones.
The narrative is built on older written material about folk belief and local oral tradition. It draws on Just Mathias Thiele's collections of Danish folk legends and Evald Tang Kristensen's records of legends gathered from oral sources, supplemented by Arnold Olsen's book on the holy springs of North Zealand.
**Hosts and production**
Obscuritas is a Danish podcast in which host Louise Lindblad and narrator Poul Grinder-Hansen examine the darker corners of Danish history, including rituals, superstition, curses and unsolved crimes. The programme has been released weekly since 2022.
This particular episode is narrated by Louise Lindblad, with Rikke Caroline Carlsen as editor. It runs for nine minutes and can be found in the full Obscuritas episode listing.
