Lars Levi Laestadius

Laestadius was born in Swedish Lapland at Jäckvik[2] near Arjeplog in a western mountainous part of Norrbotten County, the northernmost county in Sweden, to Carl Laestadius (1746-1832)—a Swedish hunter, fisherman, tar-maker, and one-time silver mine bailiff, who lost his job due to alcoholism—and Anna Magdalena (née Johansdotter) (1759-1824), who was the elder Laestadius's second wife. Both were of distant Sami descent.[3][4] The family lived in poverty due to Carl Laestadius's alcoholism and extended absences. However, with help from Lars Levi's older half-brother Carl Erik Laestadius (1775-1817), a pastor at Kvikkjokk, with whom Lars Levi and his younger brother Petrus (1802-1841) lived part of their childhood, the boys were able to pursue educations, first at Härnösand and starting in 1820, at Uppsala University. Due to their benefactor half-brother's death in 1817, the boys were constantly short of funds from the outset of their university studies.[5][4] Nevertheless, Lars Levi proved to be a brilliant student. Because of his interest in botany, he was made assistant in the botany department while pursuing studies in theology. Lars Levi Laestadius was ordained a Lutheran priest in 1825 by the bishop of Härnösand, Erik Abraham Almquist.

In 1827 Laestadius married Brita Katarina Alstadius, a local Sami woman who was a childhood friend of his;[5][6] and together they had twelve children, at least two of whom died in childhood.[4]

Laestadius's first parish was at Arjeplog in Lapland, where he became the regional missionary for the Pite district. From 1826 to 1849 he was the vicar in Karesuando parish in Lapland. Near the end of his tenure in Karesuando, Laestadius applied for the positions of dean in Pajala parish in Norrbotten County and inspector of the Lapland parishes. After he complemented his exams in Härnösand as required, he took over these offices in 1849 and held them until his death in 1861.

At the time of Laestadius's 1826 arrival in Karesuando, the people of Lapland parish suffered from widespread misery and alcoholism.

Laestadius met a Sami woman named Milla Clementsdotter of Föllinge (also known as Lapp Mary by the Laestadian Lutheran Church) in the municipality of Krokom in Jämtland during an 1844 inspection tour of Åsele in Lapland. She belonged to a revival movement marked by pietistic and Moravian influences and led by pastor Pehr Brandell of the parish of Nora in the municipality of Kramfors in Ångermanland. She told Laestadius about her experiences on her journey to living faith. This was an important meeting for Laestadius because after it, he said he first understood the secret of living faith. He had a religious experience, and he wrote later that he at last saw the path that leads to eternal life. His sermons acquired, in his own words, "a new kind of colour" to which people began to respond. The movement spread quickly from Sweden to Finland and Norway. Laestadius based his sermons on the Bible.

According to an account from the Sami cultural perspective,

"[T]he Sami began to notice that...Laestadius had changed. His sermons were filled with vivid metaphors from the lives of the Sami that they could understand. He preached about a God who cared about the lives of the people. He attacked priests and traders who lined their pockets at the expense of others... After twenty years, something new had begun to happen between the pastor and his parishioners. Young and old alike wanted to learn to read. There was also a bustle and energy in the church, with people confessing their sins, crying and praying for forgiveness (within [Finnish] Laestadianism this was known as liikutuksia, a kind of ecstasy). Not everybody liked it, of course... Those who had previously earned a lot of money through the sale of liquor saw their incomes disappear and derided the new morals... Drunkenness and the theft of reindeer diminished, which had a positive influence on the Sami's relationships, finances and family life."[5]

The resistance to Laestadius's radical Christian ethics and morals and to his way of confronting the parishioners about their sins was greater in Pajala where Laestadius moved in 1849; and the bishop decided in 1853 that two separate church services should be held, one for the Laestadians and one for the others. It could be said that Laestadianism, the religious revival named after him, became a movement in its own right at this time, although it remained within and never separated from the Church of Sweden.

The rapid rise of Laestadianism among the Sami was due to several factors. Laestadius proudly self-identified as Southern Sami through his mother and spoke and preached in two Sami dialects. Further he chose uneducated lay preachers from the Sami reindeer herders to travel year around with them and preach to the unrepented. Additionally, in the early days of the movement, Laestadius, in order to find common ground with his parishioners, borrowed the Samis' own familiar pagan deities and concepts and adapted them to Christianity. Another factor in the rise of Laestadianism among the Sami was that the state-mandated boarding schools soon came to be populated by Laestadian personnel. Next, the strict moral code including strict temperance of Laestadianism appealed to the Sami. Whole communities that had been wrecked by alcoholism went dry virtually overnight. This had the added positive effect of improving the Samis' social standing with the outside world. Finally, Laestadianism was a faith that the Sami could identify as originating from within insofar that Laestadius himself professed to have come to know the true living faith only upon his encounter with the poor abused Sami woman, Milla Clementsdotter.[7]

Awards
Medal of honor of the Legion of Honor of France after 1841.

When Laestadius died in 1861, he was succeeded by Johan Raattamaa as the leader of the Laestadian movement.[8]