The life of Elias Lönnrot
1802
– Elias Lönnrot was born on April 9th in 1802 in Sammatti in a small and simple cottage.
– His family was poor: his father was the village tailor, his mother took care of the seven children.
– He learned to read when he was just five years old.
– When his mother did not have any food to give him, Elias was hungry and blurted out: “Oh really, then I’ll just read.”
– The family spoke Finnish and he learned Swedish in school.
1814–1828
– Lönnrot went to school in 1814–1818, but after this, the family could not afford to let him continue his studies.
– It was hard to learn Swedish in school. It was also exhausting to walk to school, because he lived far away from it.
– Lönnrot graduated from high school in 1822 and started his studies at Turku Academy (university) at the same time as J. V. Snellman and J. L. Runeberg. The three of them took on a significant role in building the Finnish national identity.
– Lönnrot was very poor during his time as a student, but he did take part in balls and festivities.
– In 1824 Lönnrot worked as a private tutor in the family of J. A. Törngren, who was a professor of medicine. Lönnrot took an interest in folk poems and this led him to make his first trip in 1828 to collect poems.
– His master’s thesis about Väinämöinen was finalised in 1827, but the other part of it was destroyed in the Turku fire in the same year.
– In the autumn of 1828 he started studying medicine at the Alexander University, which today is the University of Helsinki.
1831–1833
– Lönnrot co-founded the Finnish Literature Society in 1831.
– His second trip to collect poems was interrupted because Lönnrot was ordered to come to Helsinki and work as a doctor during the cholera epidemic.
– In 1832 he wrote a doctoral thesis on Finnish magical healing methods and he also went on his third trip to collect poems during this year.
– In 1833 he moved to Kajaani to work as a district doctor. He stayed i Kajaani for two decades.
– From Kajaani it was possible travel to the eastern parts of the country to collect poems. However, his work was strenuous and epidemics occurred frequently. The locals were extremely poor and suspicious towards medicine.
– Lönnrot himself also caught typhoid fever and he was already thought to be dead, but in the end he recovered.
– In his work as a doctor, he aimed at improving the knowledge about the importance of hygiene and how to prevent diseases.
– In Kajaani he also started to plan compiling the folk poems into an epic tale.
– He went on his fourth trip to collect poems to White Karelia in Russia in 1833 and there he met the poetic singers Ontrei Malinen and Vaassila Kieleväinen, who made a great impression on him.
1834–1839
– On his fifth trip to collect poems in April 1834, Lönnrot met the poetic singer Arhippa Perttunen. His poems had a crucial influence on the Kalevala.
– The first edition of the Kalevala, the so called Old Kalevala, was published in 1835 and its preface is dated February 28th, 1835. This day was later named the Kalevala Day, also known as the Finnish Culture Day.
– Lönnrot’s sixth trip to collect poems was a business trip during which he collected additions to the epic.
– During his grand trip in 1836–1837 he also recorded a large number of lyrical folk poems.
– On his eighth trip in 1938, he travelled to Northern Karelia and his meeting with the female poetic singer, Mateli Kuivalatar, made a huge impact on Lönnrot and contributed to the creation of the Kanteletar, which consists of lyrical poems.
– Lönnrot made his ninth trip in 1839 while working as a district doctor in Kainuu. In the same year, Lönnrot experienced a family tragedy as the church boat he used capsized. Lönnrot survived the accident, but his nephew Kaarle and his maid drowned.
1840–1844
The collection of lyrical folk poems, the Kanteletar, was finalised and the preface of the book was written on April 9th 1840, on Lönnrot’s birthday.
– Lonnrot entitled the female singer Mateli Kuivalatar, whom he met in Northern Karelia, the singer of the Kanteletar.
– The Kanteletar depicts especially the life and emotions of women, although it also contains songs about boys and men.
– When Lönnrot collected the lyric poetry and wrote the Kanteletar, he grew very fond of the sentiments of the poems.
– The lyric poetry in the Kanteletar has not received as much attention as the stories about the heroes of the Kalevala, even though they both are part of the same tradition of folk poetry.
– Lönnrot made his two final trips to collect poems in 1841 and 1844. These trips were more focused on linguistics and he travelled both to the Finnish Lapland and to Estonia.
1847–1849
– Lönnrot began the editorial work of the extended version of the Kalevala, the so called New Kalevala, in 1847 and he finalised the work while staying at J. A. Törngren’s house, where he had worked as private tutor when he was young.
– The New Kalevala was published in the spring of 1849.
– The Kalevala consists not only of poems about heroes but also of lyric poetry, wedding poems and chants and spells.
– The book is based on poems that Lönnrot heard and wrote down in Karelia and in Finland, but the whole epic tale is his own creation.
– Lönnrot met his future wife, Maria Piponius in Kajaani when he had gone for a swim. Maria was a shopkeeper and she was very religious. Lönnrot wished that his future wife would not live so strictly by religious rules.
– Elias and Maria got married on July 7th, 1849 and Elias played the kantele at their wedding.
1850–1860
– The first child of Elias and Maria Lönnrot, a boy called Elias, was born in 1850 but he died at the young age of only two years.
– Their daughters Maria, Ida, Elina and Thekla were born in the years 1852–1860, and only one of them, Ida, survived into adulthood.
– Lönnrot was appointed professor of the Finnish language and literature at the University of Helsinki in 1853.
1862–1868
– Lönnrot retired in 1862 and moved with his family to Sammatti, where he had lived as a child.
– He published an abridged version of the Kalevala to be used in school. It is called the Koulu-Kalevala (the School Kalevala).
– In Sammatti, Lönnrot was active in the local life in the village: he supported education and was one of the founders of the grammar school system in Finland, as well as the National Library. He also worked as a preacher in the church.
– Lönnrot also wrote psalms and he was a member of the psalm book committee in 1863.
– Lönnrot’s wife Maria died at the age of 45 in 1868.
1874–1884
– Lönnrot’s daughters Maria, Elina and Thekla died in the 1870s.
– After suffering these losses Lönnrot lived with Ida, but they had a difficult relationship. Ida was not happy with having to take care of the household and she was very critical towards her father. After the death of her father, Ida travelled in Europe and ended up living in Sienna. She lived there for the rest of her life until her death in 1915.
– In 1880, Lönnrot finished the Finnish-Swedish dictionary and the book Suomen kansan muinaisia loitsurunoja (Ancient chants of the Finnish people).
– During his last years, he continued his work with folk poetry and his plan was to publish a new, more comprehensive edition of the lyric folk poetry in the Kanteletar from 1840. He died before he finished his work.
– Elias Lönnrot died in Lammi in Sammatti on March 19th, 1884.
Image sources (croppings by the Kalevala Society)
- Elias Lönnrot’s cradle. Finnish Heritage Agency, Historical Image Collections. CC BY 4.0
- Reinberg, Johan Jakob, et al. 1853. Academy of Turku. Finnish Heritage Agency, Historical Image Collections. CC BY 4.0
- Linsén, A. V. 1902. Elias Lönnrot travelling. Finnish Heritage Agency, Historical Image Collections. CC BY 4.0
- I. K. Inha 1894. Triihvo Jamanen singing to K. F. Karjalainen in Uhtua. SKS Archives.
- Lönnrot, Elias 1840/2000. Kanteletar. SKS.
- Wornell, Gary. Kalevala line. SKS.
- Elias Lönnrot with his family. c. 1864. Finnish Heritage Agency, Historical Image Collections. CC BY 4.0
- Kyytinen, Pekka. 1950s. Elias Lönnrot’s household school. Finnish Heritage Agency, Ethnographic Image Collections. CC BY 4.0
- Kyytinen, Pekka. 1970. Sammatti Church. Finnish Heritage Agency, Ethnographic Image Collections. CC BY 4.0