Some such comparisons were made, but shouldn't be exaggerated.
In the July 1861 Brownson's Quarterly Review writings of Vincenzo Gioberti state:
the Finns and Negroes , the two most degenerate lineages , divide between them the two extremes , the Arctic and the Equator
In the 1853 The Educational Institutions of the United States, Their Character and Organization, written in Swedish and translated into English, it is said:
In America the prejudice against people of colour is not so strong in the country, where they are found in small numbers only, as in the cities, where they are assembled in great numbers, and where the difference of race is rendered still more prominent by their being crowded together in separate localities the so-called "negro quarters." […] I am persuaded that if the Laplanders, for instance, were suddenly to be removed to Stockholm, and to establish their abodes in that city, they would soon occupy the same position in relation to the rest of the population, as the free negroes do to the white population in America […]. What I have learnt in Lapland regarding the position in which the Finnish race stands to the rest of the population, confirms me in this opinion. [emphasis added]
Also, the article Count de Gobineau's Ethological Theory published in the July 1911 Nineteenth Century and Beyond says:
Finns and negroes were equally drowned in savagery
and
Finns and negroes, however inferior to the white man...
