Today, Sweden grieves
Sep. 12th, 2003 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamAnd I grieve with it. This morning, Sweden's foreign minister Anna Lindh died on the operating table after being stabbed several times by an unknown attacker. She leaves behind two children and a husband and my heart goes out to them and all of Sweden. I know Norway and Sweden make cheap jokes about each other, but your grief is our grief. We are of one heart and today that heart grieves.
Making this even more tragic is the echo of the past. In 1986 then Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme was killed, and his murderer is still at large. No one wants a repeat.
It is perhaps doubly shocking to us in Scandinavia because we are so... sheltered, in a sense. Our politicians don't have bodyguards. Norwegian police is not even armed ordinarily. We are sheltered, and when something like this happens, we are reminded that our shelter is fragile. I complain sometimes that Norway is dull and boring - but I want it that way. When this happens, I feel like a bloody idiot for ever complaining about Norway's dullness. Please, let it be dull forever. Please.
And of course, it's September 11th and the Israel-Palestine conflict seems to be heading head first into another abyss. Not a very good day, all in all.
I feel ill.
ETA: Read about the attack here
Making this even more tragic is the echo of the past. In 1986 then Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme was killed, and his murderer is still at large. No one wants a repeat.
It is perhaps doubly shocking to us in Scandinavia because we are so... sheltered, in a sense. Our politicians don't have bodyguards. Norwegian police is not even armed ordinarily. We are sheltered, and when something like this happens, we are reminded that our shelter is fragile. I complain sometimes that Norway is dull and boring - but I want it that way. When this happens, I feel like a bloody idiot for ever complaining about Norway's dullness. Please, let it be dull forever. Please.
And of course, it's September 11th and the Israel-Palestine conflict seems to be heading head first into another abyss. Not a very good day, all in all.
I feel ill.
ETA: Read about the attack here
