greater philosophical disputes of mid-19th Century Swedish academia. A dispute that the Boströmian faction on account of Boström’s profound influence at the Swedish universities eventually won (on a walkover), while the Hegelian faction failed to obtain any considerable degree of strong support at the Swedish universities.26 Despite its universalistic aspirations, Boström’s idealism constitutes an exclusively Swedish affair.According to Svante Nordin, Boström’s philosophy exerted little influence in the other Nordic countries, where Hegel’s philosophical system dominated.27 If one bears in mind the strong ties that existed between the Scandinavian countries during the mid-19th Century this becomes remarkable. For instance, a strong bond existed between Sweden and Finland, dating back to the middle Ages and surviving Sweden’s loss of Finland to Russia in 1809. Despite the severed political connections between Sweden and Finland, a sizable portion of the Finnish upper-class were of Swedish descent and retained Swedish as their primary language throughout the 19th Century. On the other hand, the relations between Sweden and Norway constitute a counterexample. Despite the fact that Sweden and Norway during the Napoleonic wars (1814) were united in a double monarchy under Swedish rule, the strength of the ties between the two countries was rather weak, eventually leading to the unanimous and peaceful dissolution of the double monarchy in 1905. Denmark’s and Sweden’s ties were, due to several Centuries of hostility, less than cordial at the beginning of the Century, but this subsided during the19th Century and became substituted for a sense of Scandinavian brotherhood. What became a signifying feature of the inter-regional relations of the Nordic countries during the mid-19th Century was p a r t i 1 , c h a p t e r 1 42 26 Nordin, Boströmska skolan, pp. 11-12, 47-58, and 203. 27 Ibid., p. 20 and 47.
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