Norrmalmstorg robbery

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

Events

Jan-Erik Olsson was on leave from prison on 23 August 1973, when he went into Kreditbanken on , , and attempted to rob it. were notified shortly after and arrived on the scene. One officer, Ingemar Warpefeldt, suffered injuries to his hand after Olsson opened fire, while another was ordered to sit in a chair and sing a song. Olsson then took four bank employees hostage: Birgitta Lundblad, Elisabeth Oldgren, Kristin Enmark, and Sven Säfström. He demanded his friend Clark Olofsson be brought there, along with three million , two guns, bulletproof vests, helmets and a .