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Emeritus faculty member Axel Bundgaard dies

By David Gonnerman '90
April 14, 2011

Axel C. Bundgaard, professor emeritus of physical education and dance, died April 14 at his home in Burnsville, Minnesota. He was 93.

St. Olaf hired Bundgaard as athletic director and chair of the Physical Education Department in 1965. One of his first duties was helping complete plans for Skoglund Athletic Center, which opened in 1967. He later was a founding member of the college's Dance Department in 1979 — an interest that stemmed in part from his Danish immigrant parents' enthusiasm for folk dance and sports. "Dance was a part of community activity wherever I lived as a youth," he once explained. "My father, who was a teacher, coach, and minister, was a great promoter of dance. I was interested in physical education, and dance is a great physical exercise." Thousands of students learned various ballroom dance techniques from Bundgaard during the more than two decades he taught on the Hill.

Bundgaard retired in 1986, and the Wagner-Bundgaard Dance Studio in Dittmann Center is named after him and his spouse, Professor Emerita of Dance Ann Wagner. Bundgaard's book, Muscle and Manliness: The Rise of Sport in American Boarding Schools, was published in 2005.

The April 19 visitation at Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis at 11 a.m. will be followed by a service at noon. A private interment ceremony will take place at Fort Snelling.

Read more about Bundgaard in the Northfield News.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.