Elisabeth Stenius came from an aristocratic background and, like her two sisters Maria Furuhjelm and Alexandra Gripenberg, was active in the Finnish national movement that opposed the Swedish language and cultural influence in Finland. At Smolna, a girls’ school in Saint Petersburg, she learned Russian and French and mastered both written Swedish and written Finnish. Elisabeth Stenius married and settled i Kuopio. She wrote for various periodicals and newspapers, translated writers such as Ibsen into Finnish, and herself wrote a Finnish-spirited play Tätä nykyä, which was performed at Finska Teatern playhouse in Helsinki in 1883.
