Georg August Wallin

Georg August Wallin (born October 24, 1811 in Sund on Åland , † October 23, 1852 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish orientalist and explorer .

His parents were the head of the firm, Israel Wallin von Kumlinge, and Johanna Maria Ahrenberg von Eckerö. The family moved to Turku in 1817 when the father was appointed to the chancellery for Turku-Pori Province.

In 1829, 18-year-old Georg August Wallin began studying oriental languages at the University of Helsinki . He obtained his master's degree in 1836, and three years later he went to Saint Petersburg , where he met the Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Sayyad al-Tantawi. Wallin's stories inspired Wallin on his first research trip to Egypt.

He stayed there for six years and crossed the Arabic-speaking world. In order to gain acceptance and access to the people and places, he presented himself as a Russian subject from Central Asia, the Muslim Abd-al-Wali. Wallin didn't look typically Nordic either. His dark hair and brown eyes combined with his language skills were a help to him. During his stay in the Arab world, he wrote diaries and letters. Due to his untimely death, only a fraction of his travelogues have been published. From 2010, however, a series of Wallin's reports will be published by the Swedish Literary Society in Finland. Wallin was very fluent in the language and he wrote his texts in Arabic, German, Latin, French, English and Swedish.

So far Wallin has received little attention in historiography, although he, together with two other travelers to Arabia in the 19th century, Jean Louis Burckhardt and Charles Montagu Doughty , and with Wilfred Thesiger in the 20th century, was one of the most important explorers of the Arab world Peninsula applies.

Wallin traveled continuously in Egypt, Arabia, Persia and Syria from 1843 to 1849, returned to Europe in 1849 and was appointed professor of oriental languages at the University of Helsinki in 1850; he died in Helsinki on October 23, 1852. SG Elmgren published his travelogues from the Orient in the 1860s. The collected writings of Wallin came out in 2010–2017 as a scrifter in Swedish.

Works (selection)

Georg August Wallins Reseanteckningar från Orienten, åren 1843–1849: Dagbok och bref. Efter resandens död utgifna af SG Elmgren. Helsingfors 1864-1866.
Travels in Arabia 1845–1848 . Ed. And transl. by Uwe Pfullmann. Berlin 2004. ISBN 3-89626-401-X
William R. Mead, GA Wallin and the Royal Geographical Society , Studia Orientalia 23, 1958.
Georg Wallin, reprinted in Travels in Arabia , New York: Oleander Press, 1979:
- Notes taken during a Journey through part of Northern Arabia , Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 20, 1851.
- Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Medina and Mecca , Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 24, 1854.
- Narrative of a Journey from Cairo to Jerusalem , Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 25, 1855.
Scripter 1-7. Edited by Kaj Öhrnberg, Patricia Berg and Kira Pihlflyckt. Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, Helsingfors. 2010-2017. ISSN 0039-6842

Web links

Literature by and about Georg August Wallin in the catalog of the German National Library

personal data
SURNAME	Wallin, Georg August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Finnish orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH	October 24, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH	Sund
DATE OF DEATH	October 23, 1852
Place of death	Helsinki