Elias Lönnrot

Elias Lönnrot was born on 9 April 1802 in Sammatti, the son of a poor tailor, and pursued difficult and often interrupted studies. A student in Turku in 1822, he defended there in 1827 a thesis on Väinämöinen, then obtained a medical degree in 1832 and was for twenty years a district doctor in Kajaani, on the border of Russian Karelia. He made numerous collecting journeys in Karelia, often on foot. Professor of Finnish language and literature in Helsinki in 1853, he retired in 1862 to Sammatti, where he died on 19 March 1884, at the age of eighty-one.

In the catalogue 1

• EpicKalevalaElias Lönnrot · 1849Literature