Axel Olof Freudenthal

Axel Olof Freudenthal (12 December 1836 – 2 June 1911) was a Finland-Swedish philologist and the first Professor of Swedish language and literature at the University of Helsinki, a position he held from 1878 to 1904. He is considered the founder of the Swedish nationality movement in Finland, which arose in the late 1850s as a reaction against the growing Fennoman movement. Freudenthal was also among the founders of the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland and the . His family was partly of German descent. His father Gabriel Freudenthal had previously worked as a pharmacist in Åbo, and after his death in 1845 the family moved to Helsinki, where Freudenthal attended the Helsingfors lyceum and passed his matriculation examination in 1854.

Legacy His life's work was documented by Arvid Mörne in the book Axel Olof Freudenthal och den finlandssvenska nationalitetstanken (1927). In May 1913, the Swedish-speaking students of Nyland erected a memorial on Freudenthal's grave at the Old Lutheran Cemetery in Helsinki. Designed by the architect Birger Brunila, the granite monument takes the form of a bautasten inscribed with an Old Norse dragon design and the words få skola födas bättre än han ("few shall be born better than him"). However, the party has not issued the medal since 2007 due to external criticism of Freudenthal's racial views. To date, no Freudenthal Medal recipient has renounced the award.