Lars Levi Laestadius



         


Lars Levi Læstadius (October 1 1800 - February 21 1861) was the leader of the Laestadian movement. He was also an author, teetotaller and botanist. He was vicar in Karesuando from 1826 to 1849 and in Pajala from 1849.

Laestadius graduated from Uppsala University in 1820 and was ordained 1826 by the bishop in Halmstad, Erik Abraham Almqvist. The bishop recommended him the post as vicar in Karesuando, a task he undertook with joy.

At the time of Laestaius arrival Karesuando was a place with widespread misery and alcoholism. Laestadius' mother tongue was Swedish but he also spoke southern Sami. After a year in Karesuando he spoke both Finnish and the local Sami dialect fluently. He always held his sermons in Finnish since it was the most widespread language in the area.

Around 1833 he suffered from a complaint which the doctors first thought was pneumonia. He did however recover.

He applied for the an sökte deanery in Pajala. In order to get the position he needed to complement his exams in Härnösand, which he did and in 1849 he became dean in Pajala and visitor over the Laponian parishes.

The resistance to Laestadius' radical christian ethics and morale, together with his way to confront the parishioners to their sins was bigger in Pajala and the bishop decided in 1853 that two church services should be held in Pajala, one for the laestadians and one for the other. This could be said to be the moment when laestadianism became a direction, separate from the Church of Sweden. Laestadius died in 1861 and was succeeded by Johan Raatamaa as the leader of the laestadian movement.

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Botany

Laestadius undertook his first botanic trip already as a student. Later the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences paid him to travel to Scania and Laponia in order to study and make drawings of the plants, which should be used in work over Swedish botany. He was as an internationally recognised botanist and was a member of the Edinburgh Botanical Society as well as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Lars Levi Læstadius has given name to four flowers:







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