Axel Rubbestad

Axel Rubbestad (2 October 1888 - 6 August 1961) was a Swedish farmer and politician. He represented the Farmers' League (currently the Centre Party) in the lower house of the Swedish bicameral parliament between 1933 and 1959, and he was a minister without portfolio in the coalition government headed by Per Albin Hansson which governed the country during World War 2. Rubbestad was Minister of Civil Affairs in 1943–44, and then Minister of Fuel from October 1944 until the government was dissolved in July 1945.

Biography Rubbestad was born as Axel Hansson in Ödeborg in Dalsland, which then belonged to Älvsborg County, as the eleventh of twelve siblings. He went to school in Uddevalla and Gothenburg, and intended to become a clergyman; for health reasons he was not able to finish his studies, and he became a tenant farmer at the estate Rubbestad near Ödeborg. In 1936 he moved to Vrine, another farm in the same area.

Towards the end of his political career he disagreed more and more frequently with the other Farmers' League MPs: he was a vocal opponent of the ordination of women within the Church of Sweden, he argued against the proposed switch to right-hand driving, and he was negative to the Farmers' League being in government together with the Social Democrats between 1951 and 1957.

His great-grandson, Michael Rubbestad, is a musician, former child actor and followed him as an Member of the Riksdag between 2018 and 2026, representing the Sweden Democrats.