Elias Lönnrot was born into a southern Finnish family of artisans, and in all the years he spent collecting lore and administering medicine, he always worked among the common country people.

Although Elias Lönnrot did not learn Swedish until he went to school, he mastered it so well that he could use it freely in his private correspondence, his diaries and in his later years as the language of the home. Lönnrot was not opposed to the use of Swedish in Finland, even if he did promote Finnish by substantively broadening its scope. And wherever language matters took on a political or inflammatory turn, he stayed out of the fray.

In 1832 the publisher Frenckell requested of Elias Lönnrot that he prepare a handbook dealing with medical matters in Finnish. Suomalaisen Talonpojan Koti-Lääkäri, ’A home doctor for the common man’, was published in 1839. It was based on Carl Nordblad’s Swedish-language Sundhets-Lärobok för menige Man. According to Lönnrot’s preface, the koti-lääkäri had been written “with occasional Finnish translations, adaptations, additions and improvements.” Istukka (‘placenta’), kuume (‘fever’), kätilö (‘midwife’), potilas (‘patient’), laskimo (‘artery’) ja valtimo (vein’) – all found in the book and all to become settled medical terms.

In the pages of the Oulu Wiikko-Sanomia newspaper, the editor Elias Lönnrot offered his readers advice about such matters as court procedure – “Neuvoja talonpoikaiselle kansalle oikeuden hakemisessa ja keräjän käymisessä” (‘Advice to my fellow countrymen in their pursuit of justice and correct standards of behaviour in court’). He followed this up in the 1857 volume Suomi (‘Finland’) in the form of new Finnish translations of the legislative code relating to commerce and land ownership.