It is quintessentially Swedish to pride oneself on being rimlig – reasonable. To describe something as opposite to this – i.e. as orimlig, "unreasonable" – can therefore be a stronger insult than an English-speaker would guess.
The "Swedish Dictionary" (Svensk ordbok, published by the Swedish Academcy) gives some idea of the force this word can hold in Swedish: it defines orimlig as uppenbart helt felaktig och ofta stridande mot vanlig logik, which translates roughly to "obviously completely incorrect and often contrary to common logic".
A society that operates in a rimlig fashion is in general valued so highly in Sweden, that it can be quite difficult to convince some lifelong Swedes that any of their country's institutions is operating in an orimlig (unreasonable) way.
How core a value this is to "the average Swede" can also be seen by the frequency with which the word orimlig turns up in the speech of Swedish politicians: characterising one's own party's policies as rimlig and the opposition's actions or suggestions as orimlig are much stronger statements in Swedish than they would be in English. In the world of Swedish government agencies, saying a proposal is orimlig is to absolutely pan it.
Both rimlig and orimlig can also carry undertones (or straight-up tones) or irony or snarkiness – the kind of thing that a foreigner might miss if not on the lookout.
If you have a bit of familiarity with Swedish, you probably recognise the standard adjective construction at play with these words: in Swedish, putting an o in front of an adjective (so, orimlig from rimlig) makes it "negative"; it functions just like the prefix "un" does in English (so, "unreasonable" and "reasonable" in this case).
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Like almost all adjectives in Swedish, orimlig changes its ending to agree with the noun or pronoun it's modifying. So, if it's being used with an en noun, the form will be orimlig (the base form); if with an ett noun, it will be orimligt; and if with a plural noun, it will be orimliga. The plural form is also used if an article (like den, det, or de) is used in front of the adjective and a noun is used afterwards (see the first example below).
Once you know to look out for orimlig, paying attention to how it's used can be quite an instructive lesson not only in the Swedish language but in Swedish culture.
Example sentences:
Stoppa de orimliga tonårsutvisningarna!
Stop the unreasonable teen deportations! (In English, "unreasonable" sounds odd though – we'd probably use something stronger, perhaps "outrageous").
Jo, svenska myndigheter kan faktiskt vara orimliga.
Yes, Swedish institutions really can be unreasonable.
Nej, det skulle vara orimligt.
No, that would be unreasonable.
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