Elias Lönnrot (April 9, 1802 - March 19, 1884) was a Finland-Swedish philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry. He is best known for composing the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. April 9 is the 99th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (100th in leap years). ... 1802 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... March 19 is the 78th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (79th in leap years). ... 1884 is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar). ... Finland-Swedish is a variety of Swedish spoken in Finland. ... Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ... The Kalevala is an epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century from Finnish folk sources. ...

Lönnrot was born in Sammatti, Finland. He studied medicine at the University of Turku (Åbo in Swedish). Unfortunately the year he joined was the year of the Great Fire of Turku, burning down half the town - and the University. Lönnrot (and much of the rest of the University) moved to Helsinki, where he graduated in 1832. He got a job as district doctor of Kajaani (about in the middle of Finland) during a time of famine in the district. The famine had prompted the previous doctor to resign, making it possible for a very young doctor to get such a position. Several consecutive years of crop failure resulted in enormous losses of population and livestock; Lönnrot wrote letters to the State departments, asking for food, not medicines. He was the sole doctor for the about 4000 people of his district, at a time where doctors were rare and very expensive, and where people did not buy medicines from equally rare and expensive pharmacies, but rather trusted to their village healers and locally available remedies. Sammatti is a municipality of Finland. ... Medicine is a branch of health science concerned with maintaining health and restoring it by treating disease. ... Location within Finland Turku (Swedish: Åbo  listen, Latin: Aboa) is a city in Finland, founded in the 13th century. ... Helsinki (pronounced with the stress on the first syllable in Finnish: ), or Helsingfors in Swedish  listen, is the capital of Finland. ... 1832 was a leap year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Kajaani (Kajana in Swedish) is a town in Finland. ... A famine is an phenomenon in which a large percentage of the population of a region or country are undernourished and death by starvation becomes increasingly common. ... Pharmacy (from the Greek φάρμακον = drug) is the profession of compounding and dispensing medication. ...

His true passion lay in his native Finnish language. He began writing about the early Finnish language in 1827 and began collecting folk tales from the rural people about that time. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... 1827 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ...

Lönnrot went on extended leaves of absence from his doctor's office; he toured the countryside of Finland, Sapmi (Lapland), and nearby portions of Russia to support his collecting efforts. This led to a series of books: Kantele, 1829--1831 (the kantele is a Finnish traditional instrument); Kalevala, 1835--1836 (possibly Land of Heroes; better known as the "old" Kalevala); Kanteletar, 1840 (the Kantele Maiden); Sananlaskuja, 1842 (Proverbs); an expanded second edition of Kalevala, 1849 (the "new" Kalevala); and Finske-Svenskt lexikon, 1866--1880 (Finnish-Swedish Dictionary). Languages Sami, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Russian Area - Population  - Sami  - Non-Sami - (Year) - (Year) Independence None¹ Time zone UTC +1 to +3 ¹/ Integrated parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia respectively, but with varying degrees of autonomy for the Sami population. ... 1829 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... 1831 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... A kantele (or kannel) is a traditional Finnish plucked string instrument. ... The Kalevala is an epic poem compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the 19th century from Finnish folk sources. ... 1835 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... 1836 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... 1840 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1842 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... 1849 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... 1866 is a common year starting on Monday. ... 1880 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

Lönnrot was recognised for his part in preserving Finland's oral traditions by appointment as the Chair of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki. He died on March 19, 1884 in Sammatti, in the province of Nylandia. The University of Helsinki is a university located in Helsinki, Finland. ... March 19 is the 78th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (79th in leap years). ... 1884 is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar). ... Nylandia, Nyland or Uusimaa is a historical province in the south of Finland. ...

Botanists remember him for writing the first Finnish-language Flora Fennica - Suomen Kasvisto in 1860; in its day it was famed throughout Scandinavia, as it was among the very first common-language scientific texts. The second, expanded version was co-authored by Th. Saelan and published in 1866; this version is online here: ibiblio (http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/elias/main.html) (in Finnish). The Flora Fennica would be comparatively insignificant were it not for the fact that Lönnrot, besides verses for the Kalevala, also collected uses of plants in his travels. His Flora Fennica includes many notes on plant uses in between descriptions of flower and leaf. Botany is the scientific study of plant life. ... 1860 is the leap year starting on Sunday. ... Scandinavia, Fennoscandia, and the Kola Peninsula. ... 1866 is a common year starting on Monday. ...

The Finnish graphic artist Erik Bruun used Lönnrot as a motif for the 500 markka banknote in his banknote series. Erik Bruun (born 1926 in Viipuri) is a Finnish graphic designer. ... The markka or mark was the currency used in Finland from 1861 until January 1, 1999, when it was replaced by the euro (€). The currency code used for the markka was FIM, and the usual familiar notation was a postfix mk. ... A £20 Ulster Bank banknote. ...

As a botanist he was well-respected, and in the standard botanical author abbreviation Lönnrot is applied to species he described. In biology, binomial nomenclature is a standard convention used for naming species. ... In biology, a species is a kind of organism. ...