He Who Kills the Dragon

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.

For the first time in Swedish history a working-class party had its own parliamentary majority. Every right-thinking Social Democrat was perfectly aware that the government was now simply the mouthpiece of the TUC. Hence the decision to demonstrate outside the TUC citadel rather than government offices.

The fifty or so women who had gathered outside the entrance to the TUC building handed over a list of their demands to a TUC representative and were told to address their concerns to the government. But generally they had done nothing much apart from stand there.

On the second day the tone had hardened considerably and the number of women had multiplied. A couple hundred mothers demanding ‘Margarine on the bread of working-class children,’ ‘The rich eat butter, we eat rations’ — lots of chanting and shouting. On the third day, Saturday, November 6, the situation was critical. ‘Fat fathers and meager mothers’ was the text on one of the most offensive placards, which also depicted both Strand and Erlander enjoying a drink.

The day before the weekend, and also the anniversary of the death of the great warrior king, Gustaf II Adolf. It was a particularly unfortunate choice of day on which to protest in such a fashion.

Working-class women had come by train from the whole Mälar region, and the number of demonstrators passed five hundred that morning. The police of the Klara district of Stockholm had turned to the chief of police, Henrik Tham, and asked for help, since the local force could no longer guarantee public order and safety. Tham had ordered out the riot squad under the command of the legendary Viking Örn, who arrived personally in the Black Maria, accompanied by a number of ordinary patrol cars. He had pushed his way through the angry crowd and stood at the top of the steps of the TUC, surrounded by his awe-inspiring wrestling colleagues. No one had even needed to draw their saber.

‘Go home, old women, or else you’ll get a thrashing,’ Örn roared, raising his right hand threateningly, a hand that was as big as the ham served at His Majesty the King’s Christmas dinner table.

And because this happened in the bad old days, when practically all women did what their men told them, they had shuffled off. Besides, most of them had children to look after, and on top of everything else it had also started to rain, a cold, lashing November rain.

Overnight Viking Örn became the hero of the ruling middle class, and was awarded the Great Gold Police Medal, and praised by the chief of police and in the leader columns of all the right-wing newspapers in the country. Unfortunately he also made a number of comments that, sixty years later — in the pale glow of history’s night light — appear rather questionable.

In a radio interview — Stockholm-Motala — he had even talked down his contribution. Much ado about nothing, whereas the wrestling baron had been quite a different matter. What sort of weaklings were these men who couldn’t make a gaggle of hysterical women shut up and do what they were supposed to — cooking, cleaning, washing, and looking after their kids instead of running round the streets causing trouble for him and his men, and for all decent people in general? He at least didn’t have any problems with discipline at home.

One dissenting voice had been heard in the otherwise martial tone of the media. The female reporter known as Bang, who declared concisely and in summary that Viking Örn was the natural leader of Stockholm Police’s very own Cauliflower Brigade, and if he hadn’t existed for real then they would have had to make him up.

The county police chief’s staff read the senior legal adviser’s memo in silence. For a brief second the county police chief had imagined that Evert Bäckström was tailor-made for this particular honor, then she had come to her senses.

The head of HR had made the usual attempt at saving face.

‘What about the others who were awarded the medal in the past?’ the HR head asked. ‘They can’t all have been the same as Örn.’

‘Of course not,’ the senior legal adviser said in an unusually silky voice. ‘That particular medal was even awarded to famous figures in world history.’

‘Really?’ the head of HR said. He was fundamentally an optimistic soul and happily took the chance to feel his hopes rise.

Most famous of all was the German SS general Reynhardt Heydrich. In 1939 Heydrich, at the initiative of the Swedes, had been appointed chairman of the International Police Organization. The following year he was awarded the Great Gold Police Medal for his ‘exemplary contribution to maintaining law and order in a Czechoslovakia hit hard by the winds of war.’

‘Would you like to hear any other examples?’ the senior legal adviser asked with a gentle smile.

We’ll have to do what we usually do, the county police chief thought, as she hurried off to her next meeting. There was no way of avoiding a press conference with the little fat disaster, sadly. With a bit of luck, Anna Holt was enough of a woman to keep it within reasonable bounds. Speaking for herself, she knew of at least one person who wouldn’t be attending. There’d have to be the customary cut-glass vase, of course, she thought.