Artur Eklund

Eklund was born in Jakobstad into a large family; his father was a teacher at a school for the deaf. He attended the Swedish lyceum in Oulu and passed his matriculation examination in 1898 with outstanding marks. He chose aesthetics and modern literature as his main subject at the University of Helsinki, with Sanskrit and comparative linguistics among his minor subjects.^[1]

In 1905 Eklund was appointed assistant fencing master at the University of Helsinki, a post he held until 1927 when he succeeded his mentor as fencing master.^[1] He built a reputation as a sports journalist, particularly as editor of Finskt Idrottsblad from 1913 to 1920, and was considered the leading sports writer in the Nordic countries during this period. He was one of the founders of the Swedish Finland Sports Federation (FSGI) in 1912.^[1]

His essays on sport went far beyond conventional reporting, drawing on the philosophy of Henri Bergson and William James to explore the irrational fascination of competitive athletics. These were collected in Idrottens filosofi (The Philosophy of Sport, 1917), which was acclaimed as a unique contribution to sports literature. From 1915 he also worked for several Helsinki Swedish-language daily newspapers including Hufvudstadsbladet and Svenska Pressen.^[1]

As the first editor of Studentbladet from 1911 to 1912, Eklund played a central role in the debate that led to the adoption of the term finlandssvensk (Finland Swede) as the standard designation for the Swedish-speaking population of Finland, and to the coinage of finländare (Finn in a civic sense) to distinguish Finnish citizens from Finnish-speakers.^[1]

In 1914 he edited the collection Svenskt i Finland. Ställning och strävanden (Swedish in Finland: Position and Aspirations), contributing its opening essay "Race, Culture, Politics", in which he argued that Finland-Swedish culture was an expression of Germanic racial characteristics. The racial argument receded in his later writing but continued to appear in veiled form.^[1]

Eklund was active in the resistance movement against Russian rule from early on. In 1904 he participated in the Grafton arms smuggling operation.^[1] From 1908 to 1917 he served as curator of Vasa nation at the University of Helsinki, which under his leadership became an important centre for the Jäger movement. Though he could not travel to Germany himself — he was a family man and too well known — he was an active recruiter and was reported to the authorities in March 1915 for urging his fellow students to go to Germany for military training. He was ordered to take leave from his post as curator but continued his activist work behind the scenes. He was among the founders of the Helsinki White Guard in August 1917.^[1]

During the Finnish Civil War, in the spring of 1918, Eklund was the first to publicly propose a monarchy for Finland, in an article in Wasabladet. The proposal drew sharp criticism in the Ostrobothnian press but gained broader currency later that year.^[1]

Eklund was elected to the Parliament of Finland in 1919 for the Swedish People's Party of Finland, representing the northern Vaasa constituency. Parliamentary work proved ill-suited to his temperament: true to his anti-democratic convictions, he became frustrated and declined to stand for re-election, serving only until 1922. He continued working as a journalist until his sudden death from pneumonia in 1927.^[1]