Elias Lönnrot

Elias Lönnrot was born on April 9th, 1802 in Sammatta, Finland and died in 1884.

He started his studies at the Academy in Turku. A 16-page work titled about Väinämöinen, the god of ancient Finnish was written in 1827. He proceeded his studies in Helsinki where he became a doctor. In Turku, he studied Russian and the classical languages (Greek, Hebrew, Latin). His thesis for medicine was about magic in Finnish medicine and it was written in Swedish. He used some oral literature gathered by other writers to do the work. This thesis shows he was prone to the oral literary tradition of the Finnish.

He worked as a teacher for a while and then he started his first journey on collecting the national treasure. He encountered a rune singer named Juhan Kainulainen and he spent three days writing down his songs, saying and oaths. In 1828 he had about 6.000 verses at his disposition and they were mostly epic poems, sayings and oaths.

During his lifetime Elias worked on a Finnish-Swedish dictionary. He wrote a book of poems and ballads named "Kanteletar". In 1844 he published a book about the riddles of the Finnish people and in 1880 his book about the oaths of the Finnish people came to life.