[1] Eino Leino was baptized as Armas Einar Leopold Lönnbohm in Paltamo as the seventh and youngest son in a family of ten children.

[2][3] Leino's father had changed his name from Antti Mustonen to Anders Lönnbohm to improve his chances of marrying his future upper-class wife, Anna Emilia Kyrenius.

The political situation, which escalated into the Finnish Civil War, was a bitter experience for Leino, who had always written for tolerance and also appreciated the labor movement from which he had good friends.

But on the other hand, Leino later drove a general amnesty for Red Side line men and women in prisons[6] and demanded the abolition of the death penalty.

[7] In April 1918, Leino's six-part series of articles called "For the Finnish Workers" was published in the Social Democratic magazine Työn valta ("Power of Labor"), in which he, as an impartial writer belonging to the "civilized poverty", strongly appealed for peace and mutual understanding.

[8] After the Finnish Civil War, Leino's idealistic faith for national unity collapsed, and his influence as a journalist and polemicist weakened.

[5] In addition to writing poetry, Eino Leino wrote in newspapers about theatre and culture in general, and translated works of important writers such as Runeberg and Goethe.

[5] In the summer of 1921, Leino traveled to Estonia for a written tour organized by the Finnish-Estonian friends Aino and Gustav Suits.

With his poetry evenings, presentations and celebrations in Tartu and Tallinn, the trip became a success, and Eino Leino was received everywhere as a significant poet.

[12] Already at that time as a famous man, he was buried at the expense of the state, and the funeral was attended by President L. K. Relander and other statesmen of the country.

[16] Actually, Leino coined the term national neoromantism by himself to characterize the works by talents of young Finland such as composer Jean Sibelius, painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela and architect Eliel Saarinen.

In his early works, including his most famous collection Helkavirsiä (1903) influence of the national epic Kalevala is visible.