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ports and a thriving textiles industry, added to a growing economy and the rise of a new
middle class.
Coupled with discontent in the countryside and exacerbated by famine early in the pro-
cess, industrialisation led to enormous social changes - from mass emigration to the rapid
growth of labour and social movements such as unionisation.
MURDERS MOST MYSTERIOUS
Assassination has been a common enough cause of death for so many Swedish heads of
state as to qualify as 'natural causes'. King Karl XII (1681-1718) was mysteriously shot
dead while inspecting his troops during a winter siege in Trondheim, Norway. While Nor-
wegians take credit for the killing, the theory that Karl XII had been shot by one of his own
men, disgruntled because the king's many military losses cost Sweden its rank as a great
power, has persisted among historians.
Less than a century later, in March 1792, King Gustav III was assassinated at a masked
ball in the foyer of the Royal Opera House. The assassination - later the subject of a Verdi
opera - was the result of a conspiracy hatched by nobles alarmed at the king's autocratic
ways. His principal assailant, Jacob Johan Anckarström, was stripped of his lands and
titles before being flogged and decapitated.
This trend of unsolved high-profile deaths has continued to the present day. In 1986,
Social Democrat Prime Minister Olof Palme (1927-86) was shot dead by a mystery man
as he walked home from the cinema with his wife on a frigid February night. Palme's wife,
who behaved strangely throughout the murder investigation, eventually identified Chris-
ter Pettersson as the murderer. Pettersson was acquitted on appeal, as there was a great
deal of doubt as to whether the murderer could have been accurately identified from a
single glimpse on a dark night. Questions remain unanswered as to why the police invest-
igation was so bungled, why strong leads weren't followed up and conspiracy theories
abound. Palme's murderer is still at large, though in recent years some evidence has
emerged that implicates the South African secret service, which may have targeted
Palme due to his strong anti-apartheid stance.
Sweden (Not) at War
Sweden declared itself neutral in 1912, and remained so throughout the bloodshed of
WWI. Swedish neutrality during WWII was ambiguous: letting German troops march
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