Arvi Järventaus

Born in Oulu in 1883, Arvi Järventaus was a Finnish writer and Lutheran priest. He published under the name Arvi Järventaus after earlier using the family name Ockenström, and he died in Hartola in 1939.

He is remembered as a classic writer of Lapland and as one of the first important Finnish-language authors to depict the Tunturi-Lapland region and Sámi country in fiction. Alongside northern subjects, he also wrote about Oulu, Finnish history, and Hungary, building a large body of work that included novels, stories, and other prose.

Järventaus was widely read in his time, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. His life seems to have been marked by a tension between his calling as a priest and his work as a writer, which gives his career an added human depth behind the books.