I wanted to blog about Olof Palme already on February 28 (the anniversary of his murder) but haven't gotten around to it until today. But instead of writing about him myself I will link to tributes from my fellow bloggers:
Olof Palme...and Bruce Springsteen
En märklig känsla av vemod (Swedish)
And a news article.
For those of you who need an introduction, here's his life (and death).
I was 10 when Palme was murdered. Having grown up in a Social Democratic home I was already very familiar with who he was and with his politics. And it's obviously not every day a country's Prime Minister is murdered (though sadly it happened in Sweden yet again in 2003 when Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was knifed down; fortunately that case has been solved) so it's one of those things you remember forever. I had spent the night at my grandparents' and turned on the radio in the morning to listen to a radio play. We couldn't understand how the writers could joke about such a thing, before it started to sink in that it had actually happened. I remember that my grandmother cried but I don't think I did. I also remember that they cancelled all TV shows and just played sad music on TV all day. I will also always associate Palme's murder with getting my ears pierced. I hadn't had it done that very day but two days earlier and I guess my ears were still hurting. Weird how one's memory works.
I'll always remember when Diana's death was because I was up a ladder painting my new apartment's windows when I heard.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes it August 1997.
Not perhaps as world-shattering an event as Palme or Lind's assassination or indeed 9/11 or the tsunami, but because I was doing something very specific it has stuck.