Kristjan Jaak Peterson also known as Christian Jacob Petersohn, was an Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

n poet, commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature

Estonian literature

Estonian literature refers to literature written in the Estonian language The domination of Estonia after the Northern Crusades, from the 13th century to 1918 by Germany, Sweden, and Russia resulted few early written literary works in Estonian language. The oldest records of written Estonian...

 and the founder of modern Estonian poetry

Estonian literature

Estonian literature refers to literature written in the Estonian language The domination of Estonia after the Northern Crusades, from the 13th century to 1918 by Germany, Sweden, and Russia resulted few early written literary works in Estonian language. The oldest records of written Estonian...

. His literary career was cut short by the tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 that killed him at the age of 21. His birthday on March 14 is celebrated in Estonia as the Mother Tongue Day.

Cannot the tongue of this land

In the wind of incantation

Rising up to the heavens

Seek for eternity?

Kristjan Jaak Peterson

Those lines have been interpreted as a claim to reestablish the birthright of the Estonian language

Estonian language

Estonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...

. After the University of Tartu

University of Tartu

The University of Tartu is a classical university in the city of Tartu, Estonia. University of Tartu is the national university of Estonia; it is the biggest and highest-ranked university in Estonia...

 was reopened in 1802, but with lectures given in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 only, Kristjan Jaak Peterson became the first university student to acknowledge his Estonian origin, contributing to the Estonian National Awakening

Estonian national awakening

The Estonian Age of Awakening is a period in history where Estonians came to acknowledge themselves as a nation deserving the right to govern themselves. This period is considered to begin in 1850s with greater rights being granted to commoners and to end with the declaration of the Republic of...

.

Kristjan Jaak Peterson gathered his Estonian poems into two small books but never saw them published, as this only occurred a hundred years after his death. Three German poems were published posthumously in 1823. One of Peterson's projects was fulfilled in his lifetime, the German version of Kristfrid Ganander's Mythologia Fennica, a dictionary of Finnish mythological

Finnish mythology

Finnish mythology is the mythology that went with Finnish paganism which was practised by the Finnish people prior to Christianisation. It has many features shared with fellow Finnic Estonian mythology and its non-Finnic neighbours, the Balts and the Scandinavians...

 words and names (the Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 original was published in 1789) Peterson's translation of Ganander's dictionary found many readers in Estonia and abroad, becoming an important source of national ideology and inspiration for early Estonian literature. Its dominating influence extended through the first decades of the 20th century.

By nature, Peterson imitated the lifestyle of the Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

 cynics and dressed extravagantly, including elements of Estonian traditional clothing (a characteristic long black coat) in his dress. Being exceptionally talented in linguistic subjects, he quickly obtained knowledge of several languages, both ancient and modern, wrote philological treatises and made an attempt to compose a Swedish grammar. In modern days, Peterson's linguistic manuscripts, together with the original versions of his poems and diary, were published in 2001 in an Estonian-German bilingual edition, which included some new translations.