As a child, he heard his mother, Katarina Sofia Calamnius, sing the songs of the Finnish-Swedish poet Frans Michael Franzén. At the age of eleven, he was sent to school in Oulu and boarded with relatives in the possession of a lending library, where he nurtured his imagination with the reading of novels. He was given a Christian upbringing that came to characterize his entire life.
As a child he heard his mother Katarina Sofia Calamnius sing the songs of the Finnish-Swedish poet Frans Michael Franzén At the age of eleven he was sent to school in Oulu and boarded with relatives in the possession of a lending library where he nurtured his imagination with the reading of novels He was given a Christian upbringing that came to characterize his entire life