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Encyclopedia Britannica

CASTREN, MATTHIAS ALEXANDER (1813-1853)

This article appears in Volume V05, Page 483 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: CAR-CAU

CASTREN, MATTHIAS ALEXANDER (1813-1853) , Finnish ethnologist and philologist, was born at Tervola, in the parish of Kemi in Finland, on the 2oth of November (December 2, 1813). His father, Christian Castren, parish minister at Rovaniemi, died in 1825; and Matthias passed under the

protection

PROTECTION

of his uncle, Mathias Castren, the kindly and learned incumbent of Kemi. At the age of twelve he was sent to school at Ulefiborg, and there he helped to maintain himself by teaching the younger children. On his removal to the Alexander University at Helsingfprs in 183o, he first devoted himself to Greek and Hebrew
with the intention of entering the church; but his

interest

INTEREST

was soon excited by the language of his native country, and he even began before his course was completed to lay the

foundations

FOUNDATIONS

of a

work

WORK

on Finnish mythology. The necessity of personal explorations among the still unwritten languages of cognate tribes soon made itself evident; and in 1838 he joined a medical fellow-student, Dr. Ehrstrom, in a journey through

Lapland

LAPLAND, or LAPPLAND

. In the following year he travelled in Russian Karelia at the expense of the Literary Society of Finland; and in 1841 he undertook, in company with Dr Elias Lonnrot, the

great

GREAT

Finnish philologist, a third journey, which ultimately extended beyond the Ural as far as Obdorsk, and occupied a period of three years. Before starting on this last expedition he had published a

translation

TRANSLATION

into Swedish of the Finnish epic of Kalevala; and on his return he gave to the world his Elementa grammatices Syrjaenae and Elementa grammatices Tscheremissae, 1844. No sooner had he recovered from the illness which his last journey had occasioned than he set out, under the auspices of the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of St Peters-burg and the Helsingfors University, on an exploration of the whole government of Siberia, which resulted in a vast addition to previous knowledge, but seriously affected the health of the adventurous investigator. The first-fruits of his collections were published at St

Petersburg

PETERSBURG

in 1849 in the form of a Versuch einer ostjakischen Sprachlehre. In 1850 he published a treatise De affixis personalibus linguarum Altaicarum, and was appointed professor at Helsingfors of the new chair of Finnish language and literature. The following year saw him raised to the rank of

chancellor

CHANCELLOR (M. Eng. and Anglo-Fr. canceler, chanceler, Fr. chancelier, Lat. cancellarius)

of the university; and he was busily engaged in what he regarded as his principal

work

WORK

, a Samoyedic grammar, when he died on the 7th of May 1853.
Five volumes of his collected works appeared from 1852 to 1858, containing respectively(1) Reseminnen frdn dren 18381844; (2) Reseberattelser och beef dren 18451849; (3) Ferelasningar i Finsk mythologi; (4) Ethnologiska forelasningar lifter Altaiska folken; and (5) Smarre afhandlingar och akademiska dissertationer. A German

translation

TRANSLATION

was published by Anton Schiefner, who was also entrusted by the St

Petersburg

PETERSBURG

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

with the editing of his manuscripts, which had been left to the Helsingfors University and which were subsequently published.

End of Article: CASTREN, MATTHIAS ALEXANDER (1813-1853)

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