Johann(es) Gutslaff (died 1657 in

Tallinn Tallinn is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Estonia, most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a Tallinn Bay, bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, it has a population of (as of 2025) and ...

) was a

Baltic-German Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since their resettlement in 1945 after the end of World War II, Baltic Germans have drastically decli ...

clergyman, scholar,

Estonian language Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language and the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is sp ...

enthusiast, Bible translator, and

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

collector. He studied at

Greifswald University The University of Greifswald (; ), formerly known as Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, is a public university, public research university located in Greifswald, Germany, in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Founded in 14 ...

(1632) and at

Leipzig University Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

(1634). In 1639 he came to Estonia. There he attended the Faculty of Theology at

Tartu University The University of Tartu (UT; ; ) is a Public university, public research university located in the city of Tartu, Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is also the largest and oldest university in the country.South Estonian South Estonian, or Võro-Seto, is a Finnic language spoken in south-eastern Estonia, encompassing the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto dialects. Diachronically speaking, Estonian and South Estonian are in separate branches of the Finnic langua ...

. From 1641 to 1656 he was a pastor in

Urvaste Urvaste (; ) is a village in Antsla Parish, Võru County, in southeastern Estonia. (retrieved 28 July 2021) Before the 2017 Administrative Reform in Estonia, 2017 Administrative Reform, the village belonged to Urvaste Parish. Tamme-Lauri oak, ...

, and there he wrote all his works. He died of the plague in 1657 in Tallinn.

Works

In 1648 he compiled the first grammar of South Estonian, ''Observationes grammaticae circa linguam esthonicam''. Gutslaff wanted to translate the entire Bible into South Estonian, but he did not complete the translation. His translations of the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

up to the

First Book of Kings The Book of Kings (, '' Sēfer Məlāḵīm'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Israel also including ...

have been preserved. There is also indirect evidence that some parts of the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

were translated by Gutslaff.

References

Baltic-German people Estonian Christian clergy 1657 deaths Year of birth unknown Estonian writers {{Estonia-bio-stub