Antero Warelius

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Antero Warelius (July 14, 1821 – January 16, 1904) was a Finnish priest and writer who promoted the Finnish language as the national language. He was born in Varila, Tyrvää, in Satakunta. He worked as a priest in western Finland and served as vicar in Loimaa from 1869 to 1900.

Warelius studied at the University of Helsinki. With support from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg, he traveled to study Finland’s ethnography and published his findings in the article “Bidrag till Finlands kännedom i etnografiskt hänseende” (Contributions to the knowledge of Finland with respect to ethnography) in the Suomi journal. In his work he used dialects to draw the boundary between Tavastian and Karelian regions.

He contributed to dictionaries, helping with Daniel Europaeus’s Swedish–Finnish dictionary and to Elias Lönnrot’s Finnish–Swedish dictionary. In 1845 he published Enon opetuksia luonnon asioista, the first Finnish textbook on natural sciences, and in 1847 he wrote Vekkulit ja Kekkulit, the first original Finnish comedy. Also in 1847, he co-founded the Finnish newspaper Suometar and served as editor-in-chief for its first six months.

Warelius died in Loimaa in 1904.