Mikael Agricola

Mikael Olaui Agricola

founder of literary Finnish

Mikael was born in 1510, in Uusimaa - in a village called Pernå. During 1500s Finnish language was only a spoken language, when Swedish and German were the ruling languages. As a young boy he wanted to work for the church so he studied to become the first Bishop of Finland. He was really religious and was part of the Lutheral Church. Mikael studied in a Swedish speaking city and later on worked in Germany.

As a bishop he studied languages and worked as a translator. He made a book called The ABC, because Mikael wanted to start developing Finnish into a written and spoken language. This is how he later translated the New Testament into Finnish. Finnish was already a spoken language, but Mikael was the founder of proper Finnish as well as the written form of it. He also made up many new finnish words during the translating.

Funny thing is, nobody knows what his mother tongue was. All we know is, he had to be almost fluent in German, Finnish and Swedish. We also know he knew some Latin. He probably was from a bilingual family. It is said, that even his teachers were impressed of his language skills.

Mikael died in the age of 47, when he was on his way to Russia, Moscow. It is said that he most likely had a flu. We do not know where he is buried.