Haslev, Region Zealand, Denmark

🇩🇰 Haslev, the largest town in Faxe municipality, lies in the southern part of Zealand, Denmark. About 60 km (37 mi) from Copenhagen. Haslev has six public schools: two boarding schools, a folk high school, a technical school, a college of education, and a sixth-form college.

The estates and castles of Gisselfeld and Bregentved are close to Haslev.

History Haslev started out being a small village named Hasle with a few houses and streets around the church. The name was changed to Haslev to avoid confusion with other similar town names in Denmark.

In 1870, the railway line passing Haslev town was inaugurated. At that time, Haslev had only 653 inhabitants. A street named Jernbanegade (Railway Street) was paved, to connect the church with the newly built train station. In the years that followed, the street became the main street of the town with shops, banks and so forth. In 1911, the town had 3,668 inhabitants. In the 1980s, a square in the middle of the street was constructed.

During the 20th century Haslev grew rapidly, becoming a centre for the Church Association for the Inner Mission in Denmark. The latter built a folk high school, sixth-form college (with a boarding school) among others. In the 1970s and 1980s, the schools became independent of the founding association. Today, there are only few remains of the Inner Mission in Haslev.

In the early 1970s and onwards, an entrepreneur named Ole Christiansen founded whole new neighbourhoods of one-family houses with an attached garden at a low expense. This encouraged many families from all over Zealand, and especially Copenhagen, to move to Haslev.

Nobel-Prize winner Jens Christian Skou studied at Haslev Gymnasium (college) in his youth. In 1997, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of Na+,K+-ATPase

Prior to 1 January 2007, Haslev was a town in Haslev Municipality (kommune). On 1 January 2007 Haslev as the result of Kommunalreformen ("The Municipal Reform" of 2007), became a town in Faxe municipality.