Norrmalmstorg robbery | |
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![]() Front view of the former Kreditbanken building at Norrmalmstorg in 2005 | |
Location | Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden |
Date | 23–28 August 1973 |
Attack type | Bank robbery, hostage taking |
Weapons | Various |
Injured | 2 |
Perpetrators | Jan-Erik Olsson and Clark Olofsson |
The Norrmalmstorg robbery was a bank robbery and hostage crisis that occurred at the Norrmalmstorg Square in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1973 and was the first crime in Sweden to be covered by live television. It is best known as the origin of the term Stockholm syndrome . [1]
Jan-Erik Olsson was a convicted criminal who had disappeared while on furlough from prison and then held up the Kreditbanken bank, taking four hostages in the process. During the negotiations that followed, Swedish Minister of Justice Lennart Geijer allowed Olsson's former cellmate and friend Clark Olofsson to be brought from prison to the bank. Although Olofsson was a long-time career criminal, it was deemed unlikely that he was in league with Olsson. [2] In the popular account, the hostages then bonded with their captors and refused to cooperate with police. However, it has also been argued that the hostages were simply distrustful of the police given the latter's willingness to risk the hostages' safety. [3] Police finally mounted a tear-gas attack five days into the crisis, and the robbers surrendered.
Olsson was sentenced to 10 years for the robbery, and Olofsson was ultimately acquitted. The counter-intuitive actions of the hostages led to a great deal of academic and public interest in the case, including a 2003 Swedish television film titled Norrmalmstorg, a 2018 Canadian film titled Stockholm and a 2022 Swedish Netflix television series Clark . [4]
Jan-Erik Olsson was on leave from prison on August 23, 1973 when he went into Kreditbanken on Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm and attempted to rob it. [5] Swedish police were notified shortly after and arrived on the scene. One officer, Ingemar Warpefeldt, suffered injuries to his hand after Olsson opened fire, [6] while another was ordered to sit in a chair and sing a song. [6] Olsson then took four bank employees hostage: Birgitta Lundblad, Elisabeth Oldgren, Kristin Enmark, and Sven Säfström. [7] He demanded his friend Clark Olofsson be brought there, [8] along with three million Swedish kronor, two guns, bulletproof vests, helmets and a Ford Mustang. [5] [9]
Olsson was initially misidentified as Kaj Hansson, [10] another escaped prisoner, and someone who specialized in bank robberies. [7] Olsson was a repeat offender who had committed several armed robberies and acts of violence, the first when he had been 16. [1]
The government gave permission for Olofsson to be brought as a communication link with the police negotiators. The hostage Kristin Enmark said that she felt safe with Olsson and Olofsson but feared that the police might escalate the situation by using violent methods. [11] Olsson and Olofsson barricaded the inner main vault in which they kept the hostages. Negotiators agreed that they could have a car to escape but would not allow them to take hostages with them if they tried to leave. [12]
Olsson called Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, said that he would kill the hostages and backed up his threat by grabbing one of them in a stranglehold. She was heard screaming as he hung up. [6] The next day, the hostage Kristin Enmark called Palme, said that she was very displeased with his attitude and asked him to let the robbers and the hostages leave. [6] [13]
Olofsson walked around the vault and sang Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly". [6] On August 26, the police drilled a hole into the main vault from the apartment above and took a widely circulated photograph of the hostages with Olofsson. Olsson fired his weapon into the hole on two occasions and wounded a police officer in the hand and face. [1]
Olsson had fired his weapon and threatened to kill the hostages if any gas attack was attempted. [14] Nonetheless, on August 28 police used tear gas, and Olsson and Olofsson surrendered after an hour. None of the hostages sustained permanent injuries. [15]
Both Olsson and Olofsson were convicted, and Olofsson was sentenced to an extended prison term for the robbery. He claimed, however, that he had not helped Olsson but had only tried to save the hostages by keeping the situation calm. He was later acquitted in the Svea Court of Appeal and served only the remainder of his prior sentence. He went on to meet the hostage Kristin Enmark several times, and their families became friends. He also committed several more crimes. [16]
Olsson was sentenced to 10 years in prison. [17] He received many admiring letters from women who found him attractive. He later got engaged to a woman who was not, despite what some state, [18] [ citation needed ] one of the former hostages. After his release, he is alleged to have committed further crimes. After having been on the run from Swedish authorities for ten years for alleged financial crimes, he turned himself in to police in 2006, only to be told that the charges were no longer being actively pursued. [19]
The hostages sympathised[ citation needed ] with their captors, which has led to academic interest in the matter. The Swedish term Norrmalmstorgssyndromet (lit. "the Norrmalmstorg syndrome"), later known as Stockholm syndrome, was coined by the criminologist Nils Bejerot. [20] The hostages, although they were threatened by Olsson, never became violent toward the police or toward each other. [1]
In 1996, Jan-Erik Olsson moved to northeastern Thailand with his wife and son, [6] [21] and moved back to Sweden in 2013. Olsson's autobiography Stockholms-syndromet was published in Sweden in 2009. [1]
The 2003 television film Norrmalmstorg , directed by Håkan Lindhé, is loosely based on the events. [22] A fictionalized version of the robbery is told in Stockholm , a 2018 Canadian film directed by Robert Budreau. [23]
The podcast Criminal spoke with Olofsson about the Norrmalmstorg robbery in the episode "Hostage". [24]
In 2022, Netflix produced a six-episode series named Clark , directed by Jonas Åkerlund and starring Bill Skarsgård as Clark Olofsson. [4]
Sven Olof Joachim Palme was a Swedish politician and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. Palme led the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1969 until his assassination in 1986.
Stockholm syndrome is a proposed condition or theory that tries to explain why hostages sometimes develop a psychological bond with their captors. It is supposed to result from a rather specific set of circumstances, namely the power imbalances contained in hostage-taking, kidnapping, and abusive relationships. Therefore, it is difficult to find a large number of people who experience Stockholm syndrome to conduct studies with any sort of validity or useful sample size. This makes it hard to determine trends in the development and effects of the condition, and in fact it is a "contested illness" due to doubts about the legitimacy of the condition.
Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a train, armored car, or (historically) stagecoach. It is a federal crime in the United States.
Nils Johan Artur Bejerot was a Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist best known for his work on drug abuse and for coining the phrase Stockholm syndrome. Bejerot was one of the top drug abuse researchers in Sweden. His view that drug abuse was a criminal matter and that drug use should have severe penalties was highly influential in Sweden and in other countries. He believed that the cure for drug addiction was to make drugs unavailable and socially unacceptable. He also advocated the idea that drug abuse could transition from being a symptom to a disease in itself.
The Locked Room is a mystery novel by Swedish writers Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, published in 1972. It is part of their detective series revolving around Martin Beck and his team.
Clark Oderth Olofsson is a Swedish criminal. He has received sentences for attempted murder, assault, robbery, and dealing narcotics, and has spent more than half of his life in prison in Sweden. Olofsson has been called Sweden's first "celebrity gangster".
Jackie Banny Arklöv is a Swedish convicted criminal. Arklöv is an ex-neo-Nazi and Yugoslav Wars mercenary and war criminal, who, with two other neo-Nazis, murdered two police officers after a bank robbery in 1999.
Shanti Grau Roney is a Swedish actor. While his film credits include nearly twenty movies, most of these have been limited to a domestic or Scandinavian release. One notable exception is Lukas Moodysson's film Together (2000) which gathered acclaim at film festivals worldwide.
"Stockholm Syndrome" is a song by the English rock band Muse from their third studio album, Absolution (2003). The song was released as the album's first single on 14 July 2003 and also appears on the Absolution live DVD. It was released alongside its artwork as a download-only single through the official Muse website. The song's promotional video was included in the "Time Is Running Out" CD single, and was shot using a thermal camera. A different video was made for the song's release in the US, depicting the band playing the song in a fictitious talk show.
The Österåker Prison is a prison located in Österåker Municipality, thirty kilometers north of Stockholm, Sweden. It is a Class 2-security prison with a capacity for 146 inmates. The facility also contains a remand prison with the capacity for 80 inmates.
Johan Lennart Geijer was a Swedish politician and lawyer. He is mainly remembered for his role in the Geijer affair and for being the Minister for Justice who himself negotiated with the robbers and terrorists in the Norrmalmstorg robbery, the aircraft hijacking at Bulltofta and the bombing of the West German embassy.
The Malexander murders were the murders of two police officers, Robert Karlström and Olle Borén, at Malexander, Sweden, on 28 May 1999. The murders were committed after a bank robbery in Kisa earlier that day. Three men were convicted of the crimes, Tony Olsson, Andreas Axelsson and former mercenary Jackie Arklöv. The murders in Malexander were among the most high-profile cases in Sweden. The three perpetrators were active neo-Nazis and the robbery spree before the murders was committed as part of their plan to collect money to fund and create a "revolutionary" Nazi organization.
Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 130 was an aircraft hijacking which took place in Sweden and subsequently in Spain on 15 and 16 September 1972. While en route from Torslanda Airport in Gothenburg to Stockholm Arlanda Airport, three armed members of the Croatian National Resistance (CNR) forcibly took control of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-21 aircraft and redirected it to Bulltofta Airport in Malmö. There was a crew of four and eighty-six passengers on the Scandinavian Airlines System aircraft.
Events from the year 1973 in Sweden
Jan-Erik "Janne" Olsson is a Swedish criminal, born and raised in Ekeby, outside Helsingborg. He was the main culprit in the 1973 Norrmalmstorg robbery in Stockholm, for which the term Stockholm syndrome was named.
Stockholm is a 2018 crime comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by Robert Budreau. It stars Ethan Hawke, Noomi Rapace, Mark Strong, Christopher Heyerdahl, Bea Santos and Thorbjørn Harr. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, 2018, and was released on April 12, 2019, by Smith Global Media. The film is loosely based on the true story of the 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Stockholm.
The first cabinet of Olof Palme was the cabinet and government of Sweden from 14 October 1969 to 8 October 1976.
Nobis Hotel Stockholm is an upscale hotel in central Stockholm, Sweden. Located on Norrmalmstorg, the hotel has 201 rooms. Its atrium is one of its notable features.
Clark is a 2022 Swedish six episode television miniseries starring Bill Skarsgård, produced by Netflix, released on 5 May 2022. It is based on the life of Clark Olofsson and includes, in episode four, the events of the Norrmalmstorg robbery.
Two women even became engaged to two of the hostage takers.