born April 9, 1802, Sammatti, Swedish Finland
died March 19, 1884, Sammatti, Russian Finland
Finnish folklorist and philologist.
While serving as a medical officer for 20 years in a remote part of eastern Finland, Lönnrot collected linguistic information and folk poetry from the region's inhabitants. Believing that the short poems were fragments of a continuous epic, he added connective material of his own and assembled them into the Kalevala (1835, enlarged 1849), which became the Finnish national epic. He also published Old Songs and Ballads of the Finnish People (1840–41) and other collections.