Gustaf Renvall was a Finnish

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

 philologist.

Renvall was the son of a horse breeder and graduated in 1801. He was ordained as priest in 1806 and received the honour of Master in 1811.

Renvall started as a docent

Docent

Docent is a title at some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks below professor . Docent is also used at some universities generically for a person who has the right to teach...

 of Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

 at the Academy of Turku and later was named assistant professor of education. In 1819, he became a clergyman in Uskela

Uskela

Uskela is a former municipality of Finland. It was merged to Salo in 1967. Uskela was the oldest congregation of its region; it was formed in the 12th century. Surrounding municipalities were divided from Uskela. The last one was Salo as a market town in 1887. In 1967 Uskela and part of Halikko...

 and in 1829 in Ulvila

Ulvila

Ulvila is a town and municipality of Finland. It is one of the six medieval cities of Finland. Its position as city was taken over by Pori in the 16th century....

Noted works

• De orthoëpia et orthographia linguae fenniae (established the orthography
  Orthography
  The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
  
   of Finnish)
• Suomalainen Sana-Kirja (1826, "Finnish Dictionary")
• Finsk språklära (advocated the western dialect
  Dialect
  The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
  
  of Finnish, in the so-called "dialect debates", as the basis for the Finnish written language)