Ragnar Kreuger (4 August 1897 – 27 October 1997) was a Finnish industrialist and amateur

ornithologist Ornithology, from Ancient Greek ὄρνις (''órnis''), meaning "bird", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study", is a branch of zoology dedicated to the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related discip ...

. From 1926 Kreuger acquired an engineering company, a construction firm, and electrical, now YIT. He started birds egg-collecting as a little boy in the 1910s. In 1917 he bought his first Finnish private collection. He went on to collect birds eggs for more than 50 years. He acquired collections from across the globe. In 1962, he donated his collection of the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki (, ; UH) is a public university in Helsinki, Finland. The university was founded in Turku in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo under the Swedish Empire, and moved to Helsinki in 1828 under the sponsorship of Alexander ...

, where it is maintained in the Finnish Museum of Natural History as Museum Oologicum R. Kreuger, but he continued to collect as a hobby, and to expand the collection even after the exchange and purchase of eggs was made illegal. Kreuger was an avid

hunter Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body for meat and useful animal products ( fur/ hide, bone/tusks, ...

. He bought the island of Hättö in

Ingå Ingå (; , ) is a municipality in Finland, located in the southern coast of the country. Ingå is situated in the western part of the Uusimaa region. The population of Ingå is approximately , while the Raseborg sub-region, sub-region has a popul ...

and introduced there a number of exotic plant and animal species. For instance, in 1939 he purchased

Mouflon The mouflon (''Ovis gmelini'') is a wild sheep native to Cyprus, and the Caspian region, including eastern Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran. It is also found in parts of Europe. It is thought to be the ancestor of all modern domest ...

from Denmark. The animals were quarantined at the zoo then transferred to Hättö. The herd gradually began to increase and was in the late 1940s about 30 individuals.

External links

YIT
Finnish ornithologists 20th-century Finnish businesspeople Finnish men centenarians 1997 deaths 1897 births 20th-century zoologists {{Finland-business-bio-stub