Bed of flowers blooms for Anna
2003-09-11 15:11
Stockholm - Sixteen-year old Veronica delicately placed a red flower on the ground. "I don't know its name. I just picked the most beautiful one. For Anna Lindh," she said.
Hours after Foreign Minister Anna Lindh died of stab wounds on Thursday, hundreds of grieving friends, colleagues and other Swedes gathered at the department store where she was assaulted by a lone attacker the previous day.
Like Veronica, they have come to pay tribute to Lindh, somehow hoping that a view of the crime scene might help them come to grips with the fact that they will never see her again.
Lindh, 46, had taken time out from her campaign for Sunday's referendum on adopting the euro to do some shopping in the swank Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) department store when she was attacked.
With sore eyes and grim faces, fellow members of the Social Democratics laid down red roses, the powerful symbol for the party that Lindh proudly belonged to.
Some chose white lilies.
Minute of silence
"Anna Lindh was not like the others. She was very committed, everything she did made sense, she believed in what she said," Veronica said, whose school observed a minute of silence Thursday morning.
A book of condolences was displayed next to a makeshift chapel, erected in haste near the entrance of the store.
Bengt Olofsson and Christina Peters, two Swedish teachers on a day trip to Stockholm with their class, heard of Lindh's death on the train and immediately cancelled their schedule, taking the children to the crime scene instead.
The girls were stony-faced and silent, the boys embarrassed by so much emotion.
It's unreal
"This is unreal. It reminds me of the murder of the murder of Olof Palme," Peters said.
On February 28, 1986, the then-prime minister Palme was killed by an unknown assailant as he walked in a central Stockholm street, only a short walk from where Lindh's friends have gathered.
And like her, he went without bodyguards.
"She believed in human beings, unlike many other politicians," said Peters, a German who came to Sweden eight years ago.
Lindh was a leading campaigner for Swedish euro entry ahead of the referendum on Sunday, and her high visibility during the campaign is now on everyone's minds here.
Many of the smiling portraits of Lindh, which had been plastered on billboards, buses and roadsides as part of the "yes" campaign, have now been adorned with flowers.
"But unlike Anna Lindh, I'm actually against the euro," Peters said.
Broke down in tears
In the crowd many women, who came to honour Lindh's trailblazing role for women in Sweden, broke down in tears.
One radio journalist, trying to interview bystanders, lost control of her emotions, and stepped to one side, eyes shielded, microphone dangling.
The police presence, massive on Wednesday, had thinned out a little, but occasionally, distant sirens interrupted the silence of the mourners.
Around the corner, on the Sveavaegen thoroughfare, a small bronze plaque glinted in the pale Swedish autumn light.
It carries the name of Olof Palme, and marks the spot where he was gunned down 17 years ago.
Across the street is the cemetery where he lies buried. And his grave, on Thursday, was covered with freshly-cut roses.