Johan Vilhelm Snellman (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈjuːhɑn ˈvilːhelm ˈsnelːmɑn] ⓘ; 12 May 1806 – 4 July 1881)[1][2] was an influential Fennoman philosopher and Finnish statesman, ennobled in 1866.

Snellman was educated at the Royal Academy of Turku from 1822,[3] where he studied theology as well as history, Greek, Latin and world literature, as well as a little bit of physics and other natural sciences.

[3] In 1835, after academic work amongst followers of Hegel, Snellman was appointed lecturer at the University of Helsinki, where he belonged to the famous circle of Cygnaeus, Lönnrot, and Runeberg comprising the brightest of their generation.

Snellman's lectures quickly became popular with the students, but in November 1838 his lectureship was temporarily recalled after a judicial proceeding that ultimately aimed to establish firm governmental control of new and oppositional thought among the academics.

Instead, he took up the position as headmaster for a school in distant Kuopio and published starkly polemical periodicals, including the paper Saima in Swedish,[5][6] which advocated the duty of the educated classes to take up the language of the then circa 85% majority of Finns, and develop Finnish into a language of the civilized world,[attribution needed] useful for academic works, fine arts, state craft, and nation building.

After having contemplated a renewed exile in Sweden, this time possibly definitive, Snellman in 1850 gave up the position in Kuopio and moved to Helsinki, where he and his family lived under economically awkward conditions until the death of Emperor Nicholas in 1855.

He was a generation older than the most active political opposition, and now backed a government which had the brightest expectations for Finland under the rule of Emperor Alexander II.

[9] Snellman's inflexibility and high profile position in the political debate would however, together with his old reputation as radical agitator of the 1830s–1840s, accumulate too much resistance and aversion to his person and his policies.