If there is one name that stands out in the annals of the missionary endeavours of the Finnish Mission Society in Owambo, it is Martti Rautanen. He arrived with the first group of Finnish missionaries at Omandongo on 8 July 1870 and moved to Olukonda in 1880. Except for short periods of leave Rautanen, whose was given the local name of Nakambale, continued to serve the Olukonda congregation until his death in 1926 – after 56 years of devoted service.
Rautanen, his wife Frieda and five of their children were buried in the Olukonda mission station cemetery. A grave of their eldest son, Heinrich, at Omandongo is a reminder of Rautanen’s stay at Omandongo. Heinrich was five when he passed away in May 1880.
Although Reverend Rautanen is best remembered for his missionary work, he was also an avid amateur botanist. Following the visit of the Swiss botanist, Dr Hans Schinz, to Olukonda from August 1885 to the end of 1885, Rautanen began collecting plant specimens systematically and sent them to Dr Schinz at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and the Botanical Museum of Helsinki University.
The genus name of the manketti tree (Schinziophyton rautanenii) honours the Swiss botanist, Hans Schinz, who collected plants in the country towards the end of the 1800s. The species was named after Rautanen.
In addition to the manketti, several other plants species, as well as two plant genera, Rautanenia and Neorautanenia, that honour his name are reminders of his contribution to botany. One species, a bulb that grows in seasonal pans, Crinum rautanenianum, was classified in 1896 after Rautanen collected a specimen at Olukonda.
Rautanen’s original plant specimens are in the care of the herbarium at the University of Zurich, while other collections are housed in the Botanical Museum of the University of Finland and the Albany Museum, an affiliated research institute at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa.
The missionary also had a keen interest in ethnology and his ethnographic collections are in the custody of the National Museum of Finland in Helsinki, the Königliches Museum in Berlin, Germany, the Stadliches Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig and the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
Rautanen also kept rainfall and temperature figures for several decades after receiving meteorological instruments from the Meteorological Institute in Berlin. He used a rainfall gauge for the first time in Owambo in 1886.