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 c… - Axel Olof Freudenthal

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.

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.

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.