Carl Axel Gottlund (24 February 1796 in Ruotsinpyhtää – 20 April 1875 in Helsinki) was a Finnish explorer, collector of folklore, historian, cultural politician, linguist, philologist, translator, writer, publisher and lecturer of Finnish language at the University of Helsinki. He was a colorful cultural personality and one of the central Finnish national awakeners and — later — one of the leading dissidents at the same time.
Gottlund pursued the creation of an autonomous Finnish territory from the Finn Forests on both sides of the Swedish-Norwegian border, with great economic and political independence.
Gottlund is commonly credited with saving the folklore of the Forest Finns. Among the ideas he promoted was the view that all languages are interconnected by the same roots.
Life
Early life
In 1796, Carl Axel Gottlund was born in the Southern Finnish coastal town of Ruotsinpyhtää into the family of a Finnish clergyman Mattias Gottlund, one of the most outstanding representatives of Enlightenment ideas in Finland. Accordingly, Carl Axel was raised in the spirit of the Enlightenment, and the basic structure of his thinking represented rationalistic Enlightenment ideals.
Matthias Gottlund, Carl Axel's father, worked as the chaplain of the local congregation at the time. Carl Axel's mother Ulrika Sophia was from the upper-class family of Orraeus in the nearby town of Porvoo.
In 1805, the Gottlund family settled in Juva, in the Finnish province of Savonia, where Gottlund's father had landed to a financially lucrative job as a vicar.
During his childhood years, Carl Axel Gottlund's interest towards the Finnish culture and language had been inspired by his father, to the most part. The opportunity in his childhood for Carl Axel to meet with the known Finnish nationalist author Jaakko Juteini is also believed to have boosted his future career choices and patriotism.
In 1810, Carl Axel enrolled with the Gymnasium of Porvoo, a junior college in Southern Finland. In 1814, he began studies at the Royal Academy of Turku. At the academy, he had awakening in the Finnish national romanticism.
In 1815–1816, Carl Axel collected various types of Finnish folklore material from his home county: poems, songs, spells, children's stories and plays, nursery rhymes, etc.
Finn Forests' autonomy in Central Scandinavia
In 1816, Carl Axel Gottlund began studies at the Uppsala University in Sweden. In Uppsala, Gottlund studied classical languages, natural sciences, history and philosophy.
In 1817, Gottlund made an exploration trip to the Finnish-inhabited Dalarna area of Central Sweden, to collect Finnish folklore and other ethnographic data as well as genealogical information, the latter partly because he wanted to improve the social circumstances of the Forest Finns and to prevent Sweden from taking ownership of their land. He recorded total of about 50 Finnish language poems, songs and spells during this expedition.
Soon after this, Gottlund published his first book, Pieniä runoja Suomen poijille ratoxi I ("Small Poems for the Enjoyment of Finnish Boys - Part I"), consisting of folklore which he had collected at his home county of Juva in Finland. A 'part II' was published shortly after.
In the summer of 1821, Gotlund launched another expedition to a Finnish-inhabited part of Sweden, this time covering the south-central Swedish area of Värmland. The expedition lasted until January 1822, after which Gottlund began acting as a political advocate on behalf of the Finnish population of Sweden. Among his accomplishments, Gotlund founded three congregations for the Forest Finns.
Furthermore, in 1821 starting Gottlund began pursuing the creation of an autonomous Finnish county called Fennia from the Finn Forests on both sides of the Swedish-Norwegian border, north and northeast from the modern-day Norwegian area of Oslo, with great economic and political independence. The tax border would have been removed and land ownership by Swedes and Norwegians would have been restricted. The Swedish-Norwegian border had not been properly established before 1751.