‘Semilingualism’ has rightly been dismissed as a theoretically flawed and overly ideological–racist, xenophobic–linguistic concept. Yet, little has been said about its history. In this talk, Karlander traces the origins of ‘semilingualism’ in the work of Swedish linguist Nils-Erik Hansegård (19182002), linking it to Hansegård’s reception of Nazi German linguistics and his involvement in the minority language politics of Sweden’s far North in the 1950s and 1960s.