Bengt Gottfried Forselius

Bengt Gottfried Forselius (ca 1660, Harju-Madise, Harju County, Estonia (then part of Sweden) – 16 November 1688, Baltic Sea) was a founder of public education in Estonia, author of the first Estonian language ABC-book, and creator of a spelling system which made the teaching and learning of Estonian easier. Forselius and Johan Hornung were mainly responsible for making a start at reforming the Estonian literary language in the late 17th century. Some German constructions were abandoned, and a strict spelling system was adopted which still relied on German orthography.

Forselius was a Swede born in Estonia. His father was a Swede from Finland, thus the family was familiar with Finnic languages. Forselius spoke good Estonian as well as Swedish and German. He received his first education at the Tallinn (Reval) Gymnasium and then graduated with a law degree from the University of Wittenberg in Germany.

In 1684, after returning to Estonia, Forselius founded the first teachers’ college, to teach Estonian schoolteachers and parish clerks, in Piiskopimõisa (Bishop’s Manor) near Tartu (Dorpat). The course there lasted for two years, with emphasis on fluent reading, religion instruction, German, arithmetic and bookbinding. Forselius introduced a new method of teaching whereby, instead of remaining passive, during lessons one student read aloud while the others followed. In 1686, an ABC-book devised by him was introduced into use in Estonian schools.

Many local Baltic German aristocrats at the time disliked Forselius’ idea of encouraging peasants to aspire to education and complained that pupils of the schools were taken by the Swedish army or that school fees were expensive. Forselius countered this by taking two of his best pupils, Ignati Jaak and Pakri Hansu Jüri, from the parish of Kambja to Stockholm, where their abilities impressed King Charles XI of Sweden.

By the late 17th century, there is evidence that up to 70% of the adult population of Estonia were literate, as compared to 30% - 40% in contemporary Great Britain. Forselius had founded 41 peasant schools by the time he died in 1688. He was drowned on his return from Stockholm where he had just been appointed inspector of Livonian peasant schools with the power to create as many as he saw fit.