ABSTRACT
The assassination referred to in The Economist was the murder in 1986 of the then Prime Minister of Sweden, Olof Palme, and the typical comment emphasized the speaker’s astonishment that such a thing could occur in that country. In Newsweek, a girl is reported to have said, ‘You know, this never happens in Sweden’ (10 March 1986:29). Comments such as these were representative in the Swedish media and also in other forums. For example, a biography published at the time contained this statement concerning the assassination: ‘Now the violence has come to Sweden’ (Bratt, 1988:140).
