Elias Lönnrot

Elias Lönnrot 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.

9 April 1802

Born on the same birth day (9 April): Fern Michaels • Frank King (cartoonist) • Georg Matthias Monn • J. Presper Eckert • J. William Fulbright • Jacques Futrelle • Jean Bruchési • Jerzy Maksymiuk • Jorge Andrade • Julius Henry, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg • Marina Zoueva • Michel Parizeau • Nigel Slater • Philippe Néricault Destouches • Somerset Lowry-Corry, 4th Earl Belmore • Søren Christian Sommerfelt

Born in the same month (April 1802): Dorothea Dix • Leopold Fitzinger