CASTRÉN, MATTHIAS ALEXANDER (1813–1852) was a scholar of Finno-Ugric languages and the founder of the Finnish School of Ethnography of Religion. His studies of remote north Eurasian peoples helped establish a discipline that he named Altaic in accordance with his theory of their urheimat (point of common origin) in the Altai Mountains. Now called Finno-Ugrics or Uralics, the discipline, in Castrén's broad definition, embraces comparative studies of Finnish and Finno-Ugric languages, literature, ethnology, folklore, and religion.

Castrén began his studies at the University of Helsingfors (now Helsinki) as a student of Greek and Hebrew. Before long, however, this was subsumed by an interest in Finnish and other regional languages. He traveled twice throughout Eurasia, including a journey through Siberia proposed by his Finnish colleague A. J. Sjögren (1794–1855), an academician in Saint Petersburg. During his visits...