The popular demand for ostentation and vanity was immeasurable. A wealth of opinion polls provided evidence of this. In fact, the ‘self-affirmation coefficient’ had never been so high in all of the thirty years that similar polls had been conducted, and the trend was heading inexorably higher.
The military and the police — even ordinary customs officers, coastguards, and firemen — wanted more distinctive grading, more titles, epaulettes, insignia, medals, and awards. Ordinary people wanted the royal family to have a more prominent role in Swedish society; they wanted the reinstatement of the public honors system, and a qualified majority demanded that it be massively expanded to include citizens such as themselves rather than just a load of culture vultures and generals.
And the prime minister, who had attended the last day of discussion, had come up with an extremely interesting suggestion. A daring suggestion worthy of a great political thinker like him, and among the most thought-provoking the HR head had ever heard. Honestly.
‘So what was it?’ the county police chief asked.
‘The nobility. The prime minister wanted to raise the idea that we should reinstate the nobility. Apparently they’ve already done the number crunching in Finance, and we’re talking about billions that could be saved in wages, bonuses, and golden handshakes.
‘Today everything is about chasing dreams. And what are fifteen minutes of fame compared with the chance to flash your backside in a reality show?’ the head of HR said.
‘So what exactly are you thinking, in practical terms?’ the county police chief’s top legal adviser asked. She was a thin woman of the same age as her boss, who had been well-disposed toward their marketing maestro from the day he first started his new job.
‘The Great Gold Police Medal,’ the head of HR said. ‘The most prestigious honor in the police force, and largely forgotten about for generations.’
The last time there had even been any discussion of awarding it was almost thirty-five years ago. It was after the hostage crisis in the bank on Norrmalmstorg, when the two ‘heroes of Norrmalmstorg,’ Detective Inspectors Jonny Johnsson and Gunvald Larsson, had freed the hostage being kept down in the vault and hauled out the perpetrators in handcuffs with perfect timing for the newspapers’ print deadlines and the serious evening news broadcasts, to be met by a veritable wall of microphones and pyrotechnic flashbulbs.
Nothing came of it on that occasion. The then chief of police, an old compromise candidate from the People’s Party who only got the job in the absence of anyone better, simply didn’t have the guts to go through with it.
‘It was in the middle of an election campaign, Social Democratic government and all that, Palme was going crazy, and the chief of police bottled it. Didn’t have the balls, basically,’ the head of HR concluded.
The last time the medal had actually been awarded was almost sixty years ago. The recipient was the then police inspector of Stockholm, Viking Örn, and the reason why he was deemed worthy of the honor was his decisive contribution during the so-called Margarine Riots of November 1948.
‘The Great Gold Police Medal,’ the county police chief said, sounding as if she was trying out the taste of the words. She had been thinking of something else entirely but had decided to keep that to herself. For the time being, at least.
‘Do you think you could look into this, Margareta?’ she asked her legal adviser. ‘Put together some notes, and we’ll have another meeting early tomorrow morning.’
‘I’d be happy to,’ the legal adviser said, and for some reason she smiled warmly at the new head of HR. ‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ she added.
Who was Viking Örn?
What were the Margarine Riots?
74.
Who was Viking Örn?
Viking Örn was born in 1905, in Klippan, down in Skåne. He was the son of mill owner Tor Balder Örn and his wife, Fidelia Josefina, née Markow. A policeman and a legendary wrestler. In the Berlin Olympics in 1936 he had won the heavyweight gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, and it was said that he gained his herculean strength as a lad by running up and down the steep stairs of the mill at home in Klippan, carrying ninety-kilo sacks of flour.
When Viking Örn was taken on as a trainee by the Stockholm Police in 1926 there was much grieving in Klippan and throughout Skåne. Klippan was the home of Swedish wrestling. Viking Örn had already brought home countless titles to his club, and now he was going to leave it for the wrestling community in Stockholm.
In the legendary Olympics final of 1936, in the Berliner Sporthalle, he had beaten the Third Reich’s great hero, the wrestling baron, Claus Nicholaus von Habenix. After just one minute Örn had forced von Habenix onto the mat, changed his grip, got his opponent in an inverted waistlock, and stood up with the baron hanging upside down in his massive arms. Then the Swedish Viking let out an almighty roar, threw himself backward, and tossed von Habenix into the third row of the audience.
Twelve years later he was awarded the Great Gold Police Medal.
Viking Örn was by this time a police inspector and the acting head of the Stockholm Police riot squad, and when the squad had been set up fifteen years earlier, its first boss had described it as the Swedish Police’s equivalent of the German storm troopers, the SA. In the years after the war their work had taken on a new direction and they largely had two tasks: the transportation of particularly dangerous prisoners to and from the country’s prisons and other institutions, and the protection of important ‘buildings, institutions, and other valuables’ in the Royal Capital.
They also possessed the police force’s first specialist vehicle. It was a black, extended Plymouth V8, which could carry up to ten officers and their driver. Burly officers at that, since Örn recruited almost exclusively from the Stockholm Police wrestling club. Their van was known popularly as the ‘Black Maria,’ and those it carried were known as the ‘Cauliflower Brigade’ after the shape of their ears.
On the third day of the Margarine Riots, at a critical moment in the nation’s history, when things were hanging in the balance, Viking Örn had finally put an end to a chain of events that could have ended in tragedy. As a reward, he had been awarded the Great Gold Police Medal.
What were the Margarine Riots?
The Margarine Riots were for a long time a neglected chapter of Swedish social history, and it wasn’t until much later that the historian Maja Lundgren, in her dissertation about the rationing policies of the Swedish government after the Second World War, was able to provide a thorough analysis of the event (Fat Fathers and Meager Mothers, Bonnier Fakta, 2007).
The riots began on Thursday, November 4, 1948. The cause of the demonstrators’ anger was that the Swedish government was still rationing margarine even through it was three and a half years since the end of the war in May 1945. The demonstrators were working-class housewives, and to start with the demonstration was extremely modest in size. Fifty or so women, of whom perhaps half a dozen were carrying placards.
For reasons that were initially unclear, they had decided to demonstrate outside the Trade Union Confederation headquarters on Norra Bantorget instead of the government offices in Gamla stan. Prime Minister Tage Erlander and the minister in question, Gustaf Möller, got off lightly, since the demonstrators’ anger was directed instead at the chairman of the TUC and his right-hand man, the confederation’s treasurer, Gösta Eriksson.