Matthias Alexander Castrén (1813–1852) was by far the
most significant Finnish linguist of the 19th century. In addition to being a
linguist he was also a multidisciplinary scholar, equally versatile in the
fields of ethnography, folklore, mythology, archaeology, history, and human
geography. Castrén was appointed Docent of Finnish and Ancient
Nordic Languages and Tribes at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki in
1840, and about ten years later he became the first Professor of the Finnish
Language.

Castrén  left
behind a huge corpus of field data, collected by himself during prolonged
expeditions to Karelia, Lapland, Arctic Russia, and Siberia between 1838 and
1849. During the short periods of time he spent in an academic environment, he
had little opportunity to synthesize his collections, a situation aggravated by
his rapidly progressing and ultimately fatal illness. Therefore, a major part
of his scholarly heritage remained unpublished when he died.

The Fennica volume consists of two parts. The first
part is devoted to the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic published by Elias
Lönnrot in 1835. Castrén was the first scholar to translate the entire epic
into any language other than Finnish, in this case into Swedish. He also
started his career as an academic teacher; giving lectures on the Kalevala in
1841. Now the translation will be published side by side with the original text
of Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala to facilitate comparison. In the marginal notes
added by the editor, Castrén’s translation is compared with some minor parts of
the Kalevala published in Swedish by other authors before the appearance of
Castrén’s full translation. In addition, there are several manuscripts for word
lists and comments Castrén made to support his teaching and translation work.