Viktor Lennstrand

Who was Viktor Lennstrand?

Viktor Emanuel Lennstrand was a Swedish Freethought activist and writer.

A former evangelical Christian, Lennstrand gave up his religious doctrines while studying 19th-century philosophy at the University of Uppsala in the 1880s, from which he resigned as an outspoken atheist in 1887. He became committed to the cause of secularism and spent most of the last ten years of his life writing pamphlets, lecturing against Christianity, and campaigning for the abolition of the state church.

A friend of Swedish Social Democratic Party leader Hjalmar Branting and a supporter of the Swedish workers' movement, Lennstrand actively supported universal suffrage and participated in Swedish political life as a Social Democrat in the 1890s.