Authors

Finnish · 1802–1884

Elias Lönnrot

Elias Lönnrot was a Finnish physician and philologist who compiled the Kalevala (1835, expanded 1849) — the Finnish national epic — from oral poetry he collected on research expeditions to Finnish and Karelian villages. He made eleven field trips between 1828 and 1844, recording over 65,000 lines of oral poetry. The Kalevala he assembled became the foundation of Finnish national identity and inspired Sibelius, Tolkien, and the Finnish national awakening. He also compiled the Kanteletar (1840), an anthology of lyric folk poetry, and produced the first major Finnish-Swedish dictionary.