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The Norwegian folk high schools are value-based institutions with a 150-year history. As such, these schools have a continual need to reinterpret and redefine the values on which they were founded. This article examines how the Norwegian folk high schools redefine the religious values that are part of their movement's heritage. Initially, the context of the Norwegian folk high schools is presented with an overview of the history of the movement and the laws governing the schools, along with relevant research. The second part of the article refers to an empirical study involving the text analysis of value documents from two folk high schools. Reification is introduced as the central analytical concept and defined from Etienne Wenger's use of the term in his presentation of the theory of communities of practice. In the analysis, the value documents are understood as a presentation of reifications in the schools' negotiation of meaning. As the reified values are categorised, the text analysis concludes that the documents focus on relational reifications. As the schools reintegrate traditional religious values, these are characteristically bridged or translated by using relational reifications and connecting these to Grundtvig's legacy.

Citizenship education played a crucial role in the 19th century transition from royal sovereignty to democracy in the Nordic region, with folk high schools (FHS) playing an important role. While established to empower the people (folk) for active participation in society, the contemporary folk high schools have reoriented from their initial national focus to emphasise global citizenship education. The paper traces this development and asks how the identity and practice of the FHS reflect the ideals of human rights education. The article outlines the ideology and history of the Nordic folk high schools and builds an analytical framework for two empirical studies of student texts. The final discussion applies the presented material to shed light on the research question and concludes by suggesting that the Nordic folk high schools can be seen as a regional adaption of human rights education.