Arvid Järnefelt
1861–1932
Biography
Arvid Järnefelt (1861–1932) was a Finnish lawyer, judge and writer. He was born near St Petersburg in the Russian Empire, at a time when Finland was a grand duchy under the Russian crown, and he studied law at the University of Helsinki. In the last decades of his life he worked as a farmer, and he died in Helsinki.
In his student years he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Finnish-language movement. He helped found the Finnish-language literary and cultural magazine Valvoja in 1880, and he translated Henry George's Progress and Poverty into Finnish. Later he turned towards the ideas of Leo Tolstoy and towards Christian anarchism. He and his mother, who shared these views, tried to live by them on a farm at Virkby near Lohja, where they also helped start a reading room for the local people.
Finnish literary histories count him among the leading intellectual writers at the turn of the twentieth century, and his accounts of the life of the nobility are considered classics of Finnish literature. The site holds Huligaani: ynnä muita kertoelmia, a Finnish collection of his stories whose title means Hooligan, and other tales. Readers who know Finnish can meet his prose here.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Huligaani: ynnä muita kertoelmia
by Arvid Järnefelt
In the title story a young tough named Ranssu is brought to a country hospital with knife wounds after a brawl in which a constable was hurt, and Margit, the nurse who tends him, finds herself taking his side against the police. A short play and a dozen tales and parables…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.