Axel Olof Freudenthal

Axel Olof Freudenthal (born Dec. 12, 1836, Sjundeå, Fin.—died June 2, 1911) was a philologist, Swedish nationalist, and the leading ideologist for the nationalist movement of Finland’s Swedish minority in the 19th century.

An adherent of the Pan-Scandinavian movement while still a student in the 1850s, Freudenthal was strongly influenced by one of the leaders of the movement, August Sohlman, a Swedish journalist who had written a racist defense of Finland’s dominant Swedish minority against the claims of the Finnish nationalist movement.

Basing his position largely on Sohlman’s views, Freudenthal, after becoming professor of Swedish language and literature at the University of Helsinki (1878–1904), developed the notion that nationality is primarily determined by language and that, by forsaking Swedish for Finnish, the educated classes would therefore be destroying the Swedish nation in Finland. He further maintained that because Finland had advanced culturally under Swedish influence, the annihilation of the Swedish cultural element would mean general decline. The Svecoman (Swedish nationalist) movement that arose in the 1860s based itself on Freudenthal’s ideology.