author
Michaël Choraeus
1774–1806
A Finnish-Swedish poet and clergyman, he wrote graceful occasional verse and short poems that helped shape literary life around Turku and Stockholm at the turn of the 19th century. His life was brief, but his work kept circulating in print and song after his death.
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Michaël Choræi Samlade skaldestycken
by Michaël Choraeus
About the author
Born in Vörå in 1774, Michaël Choraeus grew up in difficult circumstances after losing his parents young and was raised by relatives in Sweden. He studied at Uppsala, took his master's degree in 1797, and then returned to Finland, where he worked as a tutor and later became a docent in rhetoric at the Academy of Turku.
In 1802 he moved back to Sweden and entered church service, serving at Karlberg as a theological adjunct, court preacher, and regimental pastor. Alongside that work, he built a reputation as a poet, especially for polished occasional poems and shorter lyrical pieces that have often been compared with the work of Frans Michael Franzén.
Choraeus died in 1806, only 32 years old. Even so, his poems were gathered and published after his death, and his name remains part of the shared Swedish-language literary history of Finland and Sweden.