Kai Donner

Who was Kai Donner?

Kai Reinhold Donner was a Finnish linguist, ethnographer and politician. He carried out expeditions to the Nenets people in Siberia 1911–1914 and was docent of Uralic languages at the University of Helsinki from 1924. He was, among other things, a pioneer of modern anthropological fieldwork methods, though his work is little known in the English-speaking world.

Donner was the son of professor Otto Donner, himself a noted philologist. Kai Donner studied Finno-Ugrian philology at the University of Helsinki from 1906. In 1909, he studied at Cambridge under James Frazer, A.C. Haddon, and W.H.R. Rivers at the same time as his better-known contemporary, Bronisław Malinowski.

Studying the Finno-Ugrian peoples of Siberia had become an important part of the "national sciences" — Finno-Ugrian philology and ethnology, folklore studies, and archaeology — that arose in answer to the interest in national "roots" that followed the "National Awakening" of the mid-19th century. Kai Donner had decided early on that he wanted to follow in the footsteps of pioneer philologist and explorer M.A. Castrén and study the peoples who lived beyond the Urals. On his first trip he traveled along the upper reaches of the Ob and most of the Yenisei. His second trip took him to the Ob, Irtysh, and upper Yenisei. Living with the Nenets and Khant people, Donner studied not only the language but also the way of life and beliefs of his hosts. His travelogue, "Bland Samojeder i Sibirien åren 1911-1913, 1914", was first printed in 1915.