Born: December 15, 1634, Slangerup, Denmark.
Died: October 14, 1703, Odense, Denmark.
Buried: At a small village church a few miles outside Odense.
Nikolai Grundtvig said of him:
Kingo’s hymns represent not only the greatest miracle of the 17th century but such an exceptional phenomenon in the realm of poetry that it is explainable only by the fates who in their wisdom preserved the seed of an Easter Lily for a thousand years, and then returned it across the sea that it might flower in its original soil.
Grundtvig also wrote an epitaph on a monument to Kingo at Odense:
Thomas Kingo is the psalmist
Of the Danish temple choir.
This his people will remember
Long as song their hearts inspire.