Axel Olof Freudenthal

Axel Olof Freudenthal (12 December 1836 Siuntio - 2 June 1911 Helsinki) was a Swedish-speaking Finnish philologist and politician. He was a linguist, founder of the Finnish Swedish movement and ideological mentor of the Swedish People's Party of Finland, in whose name the Swedish People's Party's highest decoration was awarded for generations until the 21st century.

Axel Olof Freudenthal

Quotes

Ruotsalaisuus Suomessa (1944)

L.A. Puntila, Ruotsalaisuus Suomessa, 1944. Helsinki:Otava

• The nickname suomalaistollot is commonly used (among Finnish Swedes), and asking "are you Finnish" has the same meaning as: are you completely devoid of intelligence?
  • p. 153

• Many mocking stories about the Finns' kinship with the devil, the creation of the Finns and how it happened, and many others are commonplace, and are always received (by Finnish Swedes) with great joy.
  • p. 153

• The words of the Russian ruler Alexander I at the Diet of Porvoo in 1809 on the elevation of the Finnish people to the rank of nations were the most insidious words ever committed to memory by the Finnish people.
  • p. 198

• The Finns could not be reconciled to the right of self-determination of the peoples, because the conditions of the majority were not sufficient. Here it could not be thought that the Finns, as the lower educated, could suppress the Swedish minority.
  • p. 209

• The strength of a nation was not based on the number of individuals belonging to it, but on their activity and intelligence. I therefore consider the Finns in Finland to be in the same position in relation to the Swedes as the Welsh are in relation to the English, with the possible consequence of the Swedes becoming Swedes.
  • p. 209

• Those nations which, like the tribes of the Chudo-Finnish, have never proved intelligent enough to become the advocates of freedom or civilisation, may, without the spirit of humanity shedding a tear on their graves, disappear from the earth, or they may, as peaceful peasants and countrymen, content themselves with the idyllic patriarchal life best suited to their loyal and slow nature.
  • p. 214

• The Finns, who had not proved themselves intelligent enough to become the advocates of civilization, could safely remain peasants, while the most sacred pursuits of mankind [the promotion of culture] were to be left to the more powerful nations; such had been and still were the nations of the Indo-Germanic race.
  • p. 228

• Our task is to fight against the Fennoman hordes and to defend our Swedish mother tongue, our Swedish law, our Swedish social order, in a word, our culture in all its forms against any enemy.
  • p. 296