Elias Lönnrot
Finnish physician, philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry (1802-1884)
Elias Lönnrot (Finnish: [ˈeliɑs ˈlønruːt] ; 9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a Finnish polymath, physician, philosopher, poet, musician, linguist, journalist, philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry. He is best known for synthesizing the Finnish national epic, Kalevala (1835, enlarged 1849) from short ballads and lyric poems he gathered from Finnish oral tradition during several field expeditions in Finland, Russian Karelia, the Kola Peninsula and Baltic countries. In botany, he is remembered as the author of the 1860 Flora Fennica, the first scientific text written in Finnish rather than in Latin.
Education and early life
Lönnrot was born in Sammatti, in the province of Uusimaa, Finland, which was then part of Sweden. From 1814 to 1815, he attended the school of Tammisaari Pedagogio. He studied at Turku Cathedral School from 5 April 1816 until he dropped out in the spring of 1818. After dropping out, he worked as a tailor and singer in Sammatti and nearby villages. He joined the Porvoo Gymnasium on 20 March 1820 but left on 9 April. For the next two years, he studied as an apothecary student at Hämeenlinna. In the summer of 1822, he lived in Sammatti as he prepared for the high school examination.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q153159. VIAF identifies the subject as 7393523. The Library of Congress control number is n81027967. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1802, 1884, 1835 and 1849.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elias Lönnrot” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.