The first thing to come to our American minds when we think of Sweden may be Ikea, Abba, or Dag Hammersjkold, or we may instead recall The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or the BBC series "Wallander," for Swedish crime fiction has come to the fore since the 1960s. Few Americans know, however, that a traumatic and still unsolved high-level political assassination occurred in Sweden less than thirty years ago. In 1986 the Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, was assassinated, and the killer has never been found. Another prominent Social Democrat, Anna Lindh, spoke at his funeral, promising to keep faith with Palme's vision:  "With all our resources we will carry on your struggle.  The struggle for freedom, for international solidarity, for a free and open Sweden, a Sweden without racism and the fear of Otherness."  In 2003, when she was Foreign Minister and potentially the next Prime Minister, she was stabbed in a shopping mall. A security guard leaned over her and asked if she though the attack was political. She replied, "Of course, it's political" (Everman 91).

    The Palme assassination shook the Swedish self-image and brought about a new national introspection. Suddenly, Sweden seemed no longer to be the stable, prosperous, open society the world took it to be, and it took itself to be.

     The reputation of an "innocent Sweden" was based on its long-standing refusal to take part in wars, dating back to 1814.  Sweden never fought directly in World War I and managed to avoid joining sides or being invaded in World War II. Prospering in the 30's and developing its trademark socialism, Sweden boomed after the war with its Swedish steel, paper, cars, and telephones (Bondeson 1). Known as the ideal socialist state, with programs that provide for its citizens from birth to death, Sweden also welcomed victims of torture, most recently the refugees from the Bosnian war of the 1990s. Where had this hatred and violence come from? This, and other questions raised by a still mysterious assassination, lay behind the crime novels that have become an international publishing phenomenon.

    Born in 1928 to a wealthy, distinguished upper-class family, Palme early displayed his intelligence at an excellent private school. In 1947-48, he received a one-year scholarship to Kenyon College in Ohio, where he wrote his senior thesis on the UAW, having interviewed Walter Reuther and toured the auto plants (Bondeson). He returned to Stockholm University, where he took courses in law and journalism and was soon involved in student union politics. On a train trip, he happened to meet and impress Prime Minister Tage Erlander of the ruling Social Democratic party; by the age of twenty-five, he was Erlander's indispensable parliamentary secretary, lobbyist, speechwriter, and political manager (Derfler 2-3).

    Palme stood out from other party leaders, speaking six languages fluently, well-versed in international as well as internal affairs. His elite background and sometimes arrogant ways made him unpopular with many in his own party. Conservatives hated him as a traitor to their interests. At the time of his assassination, many police and naval officers despised him, seeing him as an agent of the KGB.

    Palme met his wife at Lund University. Though coming from a noble family, Lisbet Beck-Friis shared his socialist views, and together they lived frugally in a small house. He washed dishes and did the laundry, commuting to work on a scooter. They had three sons and were happily married.

    When Palme became minister of education in 1963, he applied his socialist ideals, extending the required years of education to eleven or twelve years and lowering university admission standards to accommodate most students, but it was in foreign policy issues that he became most visible. In 1965, while Erlander was on vacation, Palme gave his Gavle speech, stating that the Social Democratic party should side with the oppressed, that is, the North Vietnamese.  In 1968, when students were taking to the streets and speaking out against the Vietnam War, he walked side by side with the North Vietnamese ambassador to Moscow in a torchlight parade in Stockholm and claimed more bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam in the past three years than on Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Washington recalled the American ambassador from Stockholm to protest Palme's presence at the demonstration.  Sweden recognized North Vietnam, the first country to do so, and promised $40 million without preconditions. 

    On May 1, 1968, Palme was joined by Greek actress Melina Mercouri in the annual May Day rally.  Palme stated, "we ourselves define the Swedish policy of neutrality," that is, neutrality and opposition to an American-led war were not contradictory (Derfler, 14-15). Such an image served Palme and Sweden's security well, Robert Dalsjo suggests:

"the active foreign policy" of Sweden included "barbs directed against the United States" that changed  the image of Sweden from that of a reticent and pro-Western neutral to that of an outspoken and righteous champion of peoples seeking liberation from colonialism and "U.S. imperialism." Thus, Sweden distanced itself politically from the West but also gained the moral high ground. This had a positive effect on self-perception: neutrality merged with modernity and the welfare state into something of a national meta-ideology. Sweden now had a happy syllogism: Being Swedish was to be neutral, being neutral was good, thus it was good to be a Swede.

Palme was denounced in the American press for his outspoken attacks on the war, though Senator Fulbright wrote him a letter of support.  Palme also offered political asylum to American youth who refused the draft. 

    Palme was playing a dangerous game, criticizing American foreign policy while secretly taking their aid. As the Cold War had escalated, Sweden, which claimed neutrality and practiced non-alignment, had been secretly cooperating with the United States. President Eisenhower had promised to come to Sweden's defense in case of an invasion. In return, Sweden allowed the United States and its NATO allies to secretly use Swedish air space and coastal waters for submarine espionage. This deal was known only to a few at the top, including Palme. As Leslie Derfler observes, "it raised the stakes (of governmental survival) should the truth about this reality become known to the public" (16). But there was more to come.

    The Christmas bombings of North Vietnam in 1972 led to Palme's controversial Christmas Eve Declaration:

One must call things by their name.  What's happening today in Vietnam is a form of torture […]. What is perpetrated there is the torture of human beings, the torture of a nation to humiliate it, to force it to surrender…That is why the bombings are a crime.  One finds many similarities in modern history—Guernica, Oradour, Babi Yar, Katyn, Lidice, Sharpeville, Treblinka.  Violence has triumphed.  But the judgment of history is severe for those responsible. There is now another name to add to that list:  Hanoi—Christmas, 1972.

Palme's statement enraged the Nixon administration, creating another crisis in Swedish-American relations.  Conservatives asked Palme to withdraw his declaration, but he refused. Each of these three open stands against American policy in Vietnam drew admiration and hostility, respect and suspicion.  Palme viewed them as the moments in his life he was most proud of (Derfler 23).

    In 1969, Palme took over as Prime Minister, succeeding his mentor, Erlander. As Prime Minister, Palme played on the idea of Sweden as "the People's Home," where social classes were eliminated, all were equal, poverty had disappeared, and people were taken care of by the state from cradle to grave.  The cost of such a program was heavy taxation and a massive bureaucracy.

    Conditions in Sweden were critiqued not only by the political opposition, but also by the "reigning king and queen of mystery fiction" as they were called, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, a husband and wife team. Their novels became known for their psychological analysis of both detective and perpetrator and for the way they mirrored society, chronicling police brutality and a failing social system. As Marxists, they were critical of the Security Police (SAPO)'s obsession with finding Communists and its disregard of the dangers of fascist capitalists; they depicted the police system as ruined by the state takeover and bureaucratic stupidity.
 
    The Terrorists, the tenth and final volume of their series (published in 1975, the same year Wahloo died of a heart attack), echoed the fear of terrorism worldwide, with assassinations of persons from all political stances becoming more frequent.  It also contains a satirical portrait of the Prime Minister:

The Prime Minister was a slightly edgy, nervous type, with effeminate and slightly sorrowful features. Whatever he radiated, it was not the paternalism for which some of his predecessors had been known and adored.  Those who had tried to analyze in depth his appearance and behavior maintained there was clear evidence of a guilty conscience and childish disappointment. (Sjowall and Wahloo 188-89)

In the novel, Sjowall and Wahloo's detective Martin Beck outwits the terrorists planning to kill the Prime Minister, but a young woman who had been treated badly by the system manages to shoot the Prime Minister at close range and kill him.

    Eleven years later, Palme was walking home from a movie with his wife when he was killed by an unknown assassin.

    What was the context for the assassination? Palme had become a prominent figure in international politics. He encouraged Western countries to work with the Third World, decrying the neo-colonialism of American and Russian policies. His support of Castro's Cuba and the communist regime in Nicaragua led to him being denounced in the US as a communist and agent of the KGB. An international leader in the resurgence of the Socialist International, he denounced apartheid in South Africa and became known for his advocacy of peace, disarmament, and redistribution of wealth.

    Palme dominated  Swedish domestic politics as well. In 1972, the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter wrote, "Sweden has, not the Palme government, but Palme. Almost everything revolves around him, the negative and the positive" (quoted in Derfler 23). Palme referred to his party's program as "the renovation of the life of labor."  One reform followed another: in 1974 a law favoring old aged and handicapped workers; in 1975, a law regulating conditions for dismissal; in 1976, a law enabling workers to participate in managerial decisions. A plan to invest wage earner funds in private enterprises, however, proved politically difficult.

    Events turned against him in 1976. Amidst an economic crisis, conservatives criticized the centralization of power and Palme's expansion of nuclear energy; labor unions criticized his handling of the wage earner funds issue.  The Social Democratic party lost control of Parliament, after 44 years of continuous power.  Palme spent the next six years as opposition leader, returning to power in 1982 after a campaign based on the fear of conservative limits on social legislation. He eased up on taxes, accepted private day-nurseries as an alternative to the state run system, and watered down the program for workers' funds invested in their industries.  Nevertheless, his right-wing enemies hated him even more.

    On the evening of the day Olof Palme was murdered, February 28, 1986, he and his wife went to the movies with their son and his girlfriend. After the movie, he and Lisbet headed home on foot, despite the snowy streets and the cold (-7 degrees Celsius), and without bodyguards (he treasured his privacy and disliked their presence)..  Witnesses say that they stopped to look in the Dekorima store window and were approached by a man standing nearby.  He grabbed Palme by the shoulder, took out a gun and shot Palme in the back, then turned the gun on Lisbet, but only grazed her.  The murderer then ran quickly up an 89-step stairway and disappeared.

    A witness called the Swedish equivalent of 911 within 45 seconds, and the operator transferred the call to the police, but they did not pick up the phone and he gave up. A cab driver called his company and shouted, "Someone has just been shot! Call the police and an ambulance," but when the dispatcher did, the detective failed to follow standard procedures and instead treated it like a potential hoax. When another policeman alerted by a cab driver arrived at the scene, Lisbet was screaming hysterically.  It took five minutes before the police realized the victim was the Prime Minister. The response by the police was so unprofessional that some have posited that they were part of the plot. Little evidence supports that view. Nevertheless, clearly the police investigation was botched:  policemen walked all over the murder site, obliterating any footprints; Palme's wife gave a description which matched a witness, not the killer; witnesses were not questioned; the police built a case against a man who proved to be innocent.  The murder has never been solved (Bondeson, 2-38).

    The assassination of Olof Palme traumatized the nation, and Sweden's image was irrevocably altered.  Five hundred thousand people lined the route of the funeral procession, a route drenched in the color red. Fifteen heads of state, led by France's Francois Mitterand, seventeen prime ministers, and fourteen foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State George Schulz, attended (Derfler, 69). The civil burial was organized and dominated by the Social Democratic party; Leslie Derfer writes, "the symbolism could not have been more clear: the murdered prime minister was carried to his grave by his party, the Socialist International, the UN, and the Third World.  The king and the nation state were secondary" (69).


    Swedish detective fiction has flourished since the Palme murder. In many ways, it is haunted by that murder, by the conflicts that defined Palme's career, and by the anxieties created by the murders still being unsolved.  Mistrust of the state police, for instance, pervades these books. In the novels of Sjowall and Wahloo, Martin Beck has among the police only one close friend, who eventually resigns.  They liken one pair of policemen to the Keystone cops, a subplot that emerges in contemporary writers Henning Mankell and Leif Persson's novels as well, in which many policemen are depicted as racist, homophobic, sexist, and brutal.  As is true in much detective fiction, the powers on top are pushing for a quick solution, often running roughshod over the evidence, echoing the behavior of the police in the Palme case. 

    Henning Mankell's Wallander novels tend to emphasize social issues, such as the impact of immigration and drug traffic. But the last Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, draws on the shadowy history of Swedish involvement with both the CIA and the KGB in the Cold War years. Mankell raises the specter of Swedish spies, recalling the infamous Stig Wennerstrom, convicted of spying for the Russians in 1964 and sentenced to twenty years in prison, but then freed after only ten. 

    The Troubled Man opens in 1983, when the detection of a submarine in Swedish waters made Palme furious, but the guilty country was never exposed. In the novel's Prologue, Palme shouts:  "There is no proof. Only claims, insinuations, nods and winks from disloyal navy officers.  This investigation has shed light on nothing at all.  On the contrary, it has left us wallowing in political swamps." Years later, Wallander is driven to uncover the true story of the disappearance of a retired submarine commander, who turns out to have been a spy for the U.S.  Wallander learns that naval officers had socialized regularly and denounced Palme as a traitor, toasting his assassin. In the Afterword, Mankell writes, "I write in order to try to make the world understandable. […] The most important things in this book are built on the solid foundation of reality."

    The late Stieg Larsson, author of the hugely popular series that began with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, worked as an investigative journalist, leading to his emphasis on social and political problems. Larsson used the name Wennerstrom (though with a Christian name different from that of the real-life spy) for the industrialist running an empire based on sex trafficking, drug running, and Mafia connections that is exposed by his protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist. The wealthy family in the novel, the Vangers, includes torturers, rapists, and killers of women. Blomkvist's aide, Lisbeth Salander—the girl with the dragon tattoo—had been incarcerated for years in an insane asylum and sexually molested by her appointed "guardian." Larsson had just turned in his three novels to his publisher when his life tragically ended. He had asked for police protection from the Neo-Nazis, particularly because he was scheduled to give a talk on their activity on the day he died.  Larsson died of a heart attack at the age of 47 after climbing up seven floors in his apartment building when the elevator wouldn't work.  One might wonder what really caused his "heart attack."

    A trilogy of novels centering on the Palme assassination, highly popular in Sweden, has been published by Leif G.W. Persson over the last ten years.  In the first novel, Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End, Persson postulates that Palme was murdered by an agent of the Swedish secret police, SAPO, who believed that Palme was a Russian spy and traitor.  But in a surprise ending, the CIA is part of the deception of the Swedish police. In the second novel, Another Time, Another Life Persson continues his depiction of the Swedish secret security police as "lazy, stupid, bigoted, greedy corrupt idiots" (Stasio) and hints that the assassination still needs to be solved.

    So, who did kill Olof Palme, and why? One hundred forty inspectors and policemen, led by Hans Holmer, chief of the Stockholm police, were assigned to find the killer. They got nowhere, at one time arresting and trying a derelict, whose conviction was later overturned.  I have a close friend in Malmo, Sweden, who says his Swedish friends believe it was the CIA. The chief investigator, Holmer, was convinced that it was a Kurd. Many theories have surfaced in the last twenty years. One Swedish television documentary claimed that there was an orchestrated police conspiracy, including over a dozen men on the streets that night with walkie-talkies and two individual policemen, identified with photos.  Jan Bondeson, author of Blood on the Snow, writes: "a multitude of suspects, all with believable motives, form a long line of ghostly killers waiting at the Dekorima corner: a lone avenger, a disgruntled Stockholm cop, a right-wing extremist, a CIA agent, a South African assassin, and a PKK Kurd." Bondeson himself seems to believe that the police deliberately covered up a connection with the Bofors arms trade, suggesting that the killer was a South African assassin.

    Is there a sinister secret in Sweden, yet to be revealed? Perhaps we will never know, but meanwhile Swedish detective fiction is thrilling the world with its speculations.


Bondeson, Jan. Blood on the Snow: the Killing of Olof Palme. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Dalsjo, Robert. Sweden's squandered life-line to the West. Zurich: Center for Security Studies, 2008. http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch.

Derfler, Leslie. The Fall and Rise of Political Leaders: Olof Palme, Olusegun Obasano, and Indira Gandhi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Everman, Ron. The Cultural Sociology of Political Assassination: From MLK and RFK to Fortuyn and Van Gogh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Sjowall, Maj, and Per Wahloo, The Terrorists. Joan Tate, trans. New York: Pantheon, 1976.

Stasio, Marilyn, "Cold Cases." New York Times, September 17, 2010.



     Originally from Illinois, Elaine Kruse received her A.B. in history from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, and her M.A. from the University of Illinois.  She completed her Ph.D. in French history at the University of Iowa after raising two daughters. 

     She taught at numerous colleges and universities before settling at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska, where she taught European history and civilization for twenty-four years.  Her "Visionaries, Witches, and Madwomen" course was the first the college had offered in women's history.

     An avid traveler and an even more avid reader, since her retirement she continues to research and write on the early modern period of France and England. She has been a member of the Lincoln Torch Club for twelve years.

     Her paper was originally presented in December 2012.