Matthias Alexander Castren (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. He 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 Castren 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 Therefore, a major part of his scholarly heritage remained unpublished when he died.
M.A. Castren continued the European tradition of expeditions in Russia but he was also able to fulfil the needs of the Imperial Russian administration for information about the Empire as well as the Finnish national movement's request to explore the history of the Finnish people.
This two-part volume contains the reports and previously unpublished diaries written by Castren in Finnish Lapland in 1838, Finnish and Russian Karelia in 1839, Finnish Lapland and Arctic Russia in 1841-1844, and in Siberia in 1845-1849. The introductory article contextualizes them in the intellectual and scholarly environment of the time.
