This Easter hymn by Thomas Kingo is not in Lutheran Service Book as "Like the Golden Sun Ascending," though it was TLH 207. LSB prints three of its stanzas (Kingo's 2, 5 and 10) as "Thanks to Thee, O Christ, Victorious" (LSB 548), leaving out the famous opening: "Like the golden sun ascending, / Breaking through the gloom of night . . . Thus my Jesus from the grave / And death's dismal, dreadful cave, / Rose triumphant Easter morning." Kingo (1634-1703), the son of a Scottish weaver, became Bishop of Funen at Odense in 1677 and is the first great hymn writer of Denmark. He published the hymn in 1689 in his proposed hymnal, appointed for Easter Day, and ten years later compiled the official hymnal for Denmark and Norway, still called Kingo's hymnbook. For generations of Danish and Norwegian Lutherans this was the chief hymn of Easter morning, and its closing stanzas served as a prayer at the end of the liturgy. John Dahle wrote that here Kingo's notes "ring out loud and clear like the chiming peals of deep-toned, resonant church bells." George A. T. Rygh translated it for the Lutheran Hymnary (1910). The tune WERDE MUNTER is by Johann Schop (1642), the melody Bach later used for "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
Sung at Our Saviour
2026