Pop History Moment: The Killing of Olof Palme

On this day in 1986 Sweden's two-time Prime Minister Olof Palme - head of the Social Democratic Party and a well-respected (if low-key) diplomat on the world stage - was assassinated on a street in Stockholm, in front of his wife Lisbet, who was also injured in the attack.

Shortly thereafter the well-known right-wing extremist Victor Gunnarsson was arrested, and questioned by police, only to be released. It was more than two years later that a petty criminal named Christer Pettersson was arrested, tried, and convicted of the crime; he was released on appeal a year later, and died in 2004.

No one else has ever been charged, although several suspects have been discussed in the more than twenty years since Palme's murder, including South African superspy Craig Williamson, Anthony White, and Bertil Wedin; Germany's Red Army Faction (also known as the Bader-Meinhof) have actually claimed responsibility. As many motives as killers have also been suggested, from Palme's opposition to apartheid, his role in 1975's West German embassy siege, and a Swedish weapons deal with India.

To date the investigation into the killing of Olof Palme has cost the government of Sweden € 38 million and produced 700,000 pages of documentation, yet no answers...
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"The Final Countdown" by Europe

Birthday wishes go out today to John Norum, guitarist and founding member of Europe, whose 1986 song The Final Countdown was the first of five singles released from their third album, coincidentally also called The Final Countdown. It was followed by Love Chaser, Rock the Night, Carrie and Cherokee, although none of them would achieve the heights their lead-in managed...

When not tearing the rooves off various stadia, Norum maintains a solo career; at various times in his career he's also played with Eddie Meduza & The Roaring Cadillacs, Dokken, Don Dokken's solo band, and done side collaborations with other artists including Glenn Hughes. The older brother of pop singer Tone Norum, he's also the widower of Michelle Meldrum, founder and lead guitarist of the Swedish-American heavy metal band Meldrum.

Probably the best way to keep track of Norum's many perambulations is via his own website...
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Christina: The Girl King

She was born, on this day in 1626, under what astrologers all agreed was an auspicious star; hers was to be the reign to end all reigns... Raised by her father Gustav II Adolf as a Prince (until the age of five, anyway) from 1632 to 1654 Christina reigned as King of Sweden; they called her the Girl King.

Thing is, she wasn't very good at it. Damn astrology...

Bored of life in the relative cultural backwater of Stockholm, Christina abdicated her throne at the age of 28 in favour of her cousin, who became Charles X Gustav. She then exiled herself to Rome, where her palazzo became for a time a grand literary and artistic salon. While there she also converted to Catholicism; as the most famous convert of her day, she became a thing of fascination to Papists, this one woman counter-reformation whose father had once led the failed Protestant charge during the Thirty Years' War only to fall at the Battle of Lützen. Never a devoted Catholic, she was nevertheless a committed one.

Having lavished her immense fortune on the famously rapacious aristocracy of Rome, after just two years Christina realized she was broke, and so was forced to take her show on the road in an effort to drum up funds. Her assertive manner and masculine dress scandalized the ladies of Louis XIV's Versailles; while at Fontainebleau in 1656 she and the wily Cardinal Mazarin hatched a plot to make her Queen of Naples, which might have succeeded but for the murder of her Master of the Horse marchese Gian Rinaldo Monaldeschi in 1657 at the hands of two of her servants and by her order. Although technically legal, it was to make her very unpopular indeed.

Having burned her bridges in France she was rebuffed from visiting Cromwell's England and so made a humiliating return to Sweden in 1660 to ask for her old job back following the death of Charles X Gustav, even though the one thing that could have restored her popularity - a penis - was not to be possible there for another 300 years. Not only did the Swedes prefer to be ruled by the new Charles XI (a four-year-old boy) while there she was forced to sign a new instrument of renunciation, giving up all claim to a throne the vast majority of her former subjects didn't want her to have anyway.

Thus humbled, she returned to Rome, where she died in April 1689; she is buried at the Vatican, in St. Peter's Basilica.
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Remembering... Gustav V

The life of King Gustav V is one which is not well-known in North America, yet was as exciting and tumultuous as any in the early part of the 20th Century; he presided over Sweden's transition from executive to constitutional monarchy, and managed to remain King (as well as keeping Sweden neutral) as in their turn first the Kaiserreich and then the Nazis engulfed the rest of Europe...

Born in June 1858, he ascended to the throne in 1907, following the death of his father Oscar II, just two years after the Treaty of Separation liberated the country from Norwegian rule. Gustav V was the last King to interfere directly in affairs of state, in 1914, over defense spending; he was also the last King to be Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces. Deeply conservative, he was opposed to various democratizing moves which were afoot in the world at the time, Sweden included.

Despite his conservatism (today we might say because of it) he was involved in one doozy of a scandal during his reign, known as the Haijby affair; often accused of collaborationist tendencies (although, to a certain extent, some of these may be blamed on his German wife Victoria), Gustav V occupies an uncomfortable place in Swedish history.
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Happy Birthday Your Royal Highness

Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria, Duchess of Västergötland, today turns 33.

Currently the only female heir apparent in the world, the laws of Sweden had to be changed in order that she might someday be Queen; the country's Ståndsriksdagen amended its 1810 Successionsordningen* in 1980, making her heir apparent to the detriment of her younger brother Carl Philip, Duke of Värmland. No less a personage than Victoria's father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, was said to oppose the change, mainly because it occurred after his son's birth rather than before. The King's position on the matter was at the time the subject of some comment in the Swedish press.

The great-great-great granddaughter of a certain other Queen Victoria, unlike her namesake predecessor the world's next Queen Victoria is a jet-setting fashion plate who overcame anorexia while simplifying a once complicated love life...  In June 2010 Her Royal Highness married Daniel Westling**, a fitness entrepreneur to whom she has been romantically linked since 2002; following their honeymoon the royal newlyweds will make their home at Haga Palace.

*Act of Succession, duh!
**Westling became Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland, upon his marriage.
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"Dancing Queen" by ABBA

It's been a big couple of days around here for ABBA; I swear, though, it's a coincidence and not a plot...

Yesterday's history lesson from the Swedish pop legends concerned the comeuppance of a certain ambitious Corsican; today's lesson is in current events - or at least was when it was first performed. Pop music legend has it that Dancing Queen was written for Silvia Sommerlath, then the fiance of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

The song first appeared on their fourth album, 1976's Arrival; here we see it being performed on the eve of that year's royal wedding, and on behalf of the Pop Culture Institute I'd like to wish Their Majesties a heartfelt Har denäran pa bröllopsdagen today!
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Happy Anniversary Your Majesties

Not surprisingly, there aren't that many pictures of the notoriously shy Carl XVI Gustaf and his consort Silvia - also known as the King and Queen of Sweden - on the web; yet it's entirely apt that the best of those should be one of them dancing.

In 1976 ABBA released their monster hit Dancing Queen (which was purportedly about Her Majesty) and which the band played live (in 18th Century costumes!) for the King himself on national television the night before the royal wedding, which was held on this day in 1976 at Stockholm's Storkyrkan Cathedral. Anni-Frid, one of the founding members of ABBA and now a German princess, has also performed the song for the royal couple on the occasion of the Queen's 50th birthday in December 1993.

Imagine getting an original ABBA song for a wedding present... Kinda makes that IKEA gift card I sent them look a little chintzy. I guess I should have spent more than 150 kroner*.

*Uh... Yeah? That's like 25 bucks, you cheapo!
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