Den dansande prästen

Uno Cygnaeus, later known as the founder of Finland's elementary schools, is a newly ordained priest when he fathers a child with his housekeeper. The affair is kept quiet, yet it bends the course of his life. He goes as pastor to Sitka, off the Alaskan coast, for five years, then teaches and runs a school in St Petersburg for twelve, years that shape his plans for a school for every child back home. The book, told by a strongly personal narrator and frank about sex, also brings in the Indigenous people of Sitka, Tsamo, a girl freed from slavery and taken to Finland by an engineer, Emma Irene Åström, Finland's first woman to earn a master's degree, and the inventor August Soldan.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

473 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Finland, United States, Russia, 19th century

First published

2004 by Schildts

Author's age

59 when first published

ISBN

9789515014375 (original)