[4] As a child, he heard his mother, Katarina Sofia Calamnius, sing the songs of the Finnish-Swedish poet Frans Michael Franzén.

At the age of eleven, he was sent to school in Oulu and boarded with relatives in the possession of a lending library, where he nurtured his imagination with the reading of novels.

[5] He came to Helsinki in 1831 and became a member of the circle of young nationalist men surrounding Johan Ludvig Runeberg, at whose home he stayed for some time.

in 1840, the Licentiate degree in history in 1844 and his PhD in 1847, having defended a dissertation titled De modo matrimonia jungendi apud fennos quondam vigente ("About the custom of marriage among the ancient Finns").

In 1878, Topelius was allowed to withdraw from his professional duties, but this did not sever his connection with the university; it gave him, however, more leisure for his abundant and various literary enterprises.

Together with the composer Friedrich Pacius, he wrote the libretto (in the style of Romantic nationalism) to the first Finnish opera: Kaarle-kuninkaan metsästys (Swedish: Kung Karls jakt, English: King Charles' Hunt).

Topelius initially thought of writing a trivial entertainment, but having heard extracts from the opera project at a concert in 1851, he realized that Pacius was writing a grand opera on the theme of salvation, following the early Romantic style of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (1821) and Oberon (1826).