# Bo Holmberg

# Bo Holmberg

Bo Lindor Holmberg (17 November 1942 – 10 February 2010) was a Swedish politician of the [Swedish Social Democratic Party](/organizations/swedish-social-democratic-party) and a senior civil servant. He was minister for municipal affairs in 1982 and minister for civil affairs from 1 January 1983 to 4 October 1988, an ordinary member of the Riksdag from 29 September 1985 to 29 June 1996, and governor of Södermanland County from 1996 until 30 June 2005. From their marriage in 1991 until her murder in 2003 he was the husband of Foreign Minister [Anna Lindh](/people/anna-lindh).

His registered home was Härnösand in Västernorrland County. He qualified as a social worker (socionom) in 1968, worked as a school assistant and later as a planning and political secretary, and was county-council commissioner (landstingsråd) in Västernorrland from 1976 to 1982. An obituary by the historian Lars Ilshammar describes a working-class childhood in Ådalen and, among his early county initiatives, the conversion of the old sanatorium at Österåsen into a county-run health home.

Olof Palme appointed him after the 1982 election to reform the public sector through the new civil department. He stayed in the cabinet under [Ingvar Carlsson](/people/ingvar-carlsson) and left the government after the 1988 election, continuing as a member of parliament. In the Riksdag he was vice-chair, and from 1991 to 1994 chair, of the committee on health and welfare, and he chaired the parliamentary psychiatry inquiry in 1990–91.

He became governor while Södermanland was still living with the 1990s economic crisis, including about 1,500 job losses at Scania and Ericsson in Katrineholm within a single year. The county administrative board’s planning director later credited him with the cooperation body Samling Sörmland and with personal contacts behind the siting of the Swedish Energy Agency in Eskilstuna. On 1 July 2005 the government employed him as a director-general in the Government Offices, with Mälardalen questions as his brief, at a salary of 66,000 kronor a month.

Holmberg and Lindh married on Midsummer Eve 1991. Their sons were David, born in 1990, and Filip, born four years later, and during his governorship the family lived at the county residence in Nyköping. After Lindh was murdered in September 2003 he took part in the work of the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund. Home-care staff found him dead in his flat on Södermalm in Stockholm on Thursday 11 February 2010; the parish register gives 10 February 2010 as the date of death, and he shares a grave plot at Gudmundrå cemetery in Kramfors with his parents.

## Early life and education

### Family and Ådalen

Bo Lindor Holmberg was born on 17 November 1942, the son of the repairman Hans-Bertil Holmberg and the shop assistant Linnéa Holmberg. The entries in the biographical handbook *Vem är det* give no siblings and no other occupation for either parent. They also disagree on the town of birth. The 1985 edition, like *[Svenska Dagbladet](/organizations/svenska-dagbladet)* in its report of his death, names Härnösand; the 1993 and 2001 editions name Kramfors. The grave register at Gudmundrå cemetery in Kramfors, in Västernorrland County, records Hans Bertil Holmberg (4 August 1920 – 21 July 1992) and Helga Linnéa Holmberg (6 December 1923 – 10 August 2005) in the same plot as Bo Lindor Holmberg.

The historian Lars Ilshammar described that background as a working-class home in Ådalen, and Holmberg himself as, in that respect, a typical member of the generation born in the 1940s, who trained as a socionom and then made a rapid career in municipal and county government. Ådalen is the valley of the Ångermanälven in Ångermanland, running from Junsele to the Bothnian Sea, forested in its upper reaches and cultivated nearer the coast. The same reference work notes that the district is known above all for the Ådalen shootings of 1931, eleven years before Holmberg was born. The curriculum he later filed with the Riksdag gives Härnösand, rather than Kramfors, as his place of residence.

### Education and early employment

For the Riksdag publication *Fakta om folkvalda*, Holmberg reported a folk high school education and a socionom degree taken in 1968. Socionom is the title used, from 1950, for a person who has passed the socionom examination; it replaced an older designation for graduates of the social institutes. He then worked as a school assistant from 1968 to 1972. On the next appointments the sources differ by a year. *Vem är det* lists him as a planning secretary in 1973–1974 and a political secretary in 1974–1976, whereas the Riksdag curriculum dates both secretarial posts to 1974–1976. Neither account names the folk high school, the institute that awarded the degree, or the employer.

The salaried work overlapped with elected office instead of ending before it. From 1969 to 1973 he sat on Härnösand's social welfare board (sociala centralnämnden), and from 1971 to 1976 on the municipal council. In 1976 he left the secretarial post and became a county council commissioner (*landstingsråd*) in Västernorrland County, with responsibility for personnel.

## Local and county politics in Västernorrland

### Härnösand and the party organisation

Holmberg's first elected offices were in Härnösand. He served on the municipality's central social welfare committee from 1969 to 1973, on the municipal council from 1971 to 1976, on the municipal executive board from 1974 to 1976, and on the personnel committee in 1976.

In the Swedish Social Democratic Party he chaired the district for Ångermanland from 1977 to 1990 and sat on the national party board from 1978 to 1996. The Riksdag biography also lists him, from 1990, as chair of the Social Democratic district for Västernorrland County. The county party organisation dates that district to 1991, when the Medelpad and Ångermanland districts were merged.

### County council commissioner

In 1976 he became a landstingsråd, a full-time commissioner of the county council, in Västernorrland, and he held the post until 1982. Sundsvalls Tidning later described him as Sweden's youngest county-council commissioner. From 1980 to 1982 he chaired the council's executive committee. Over the same years he was a member of the board of the County Administrative Board of Västernorrland, of the board of Norrlandsfonden, and of the energy council.

Stig Andersson, a Social Democratic commissioner with him from 1979 to 1982, told Sundsvalls Tidning that Holmberg was a great ideologue and a vegetarian who never compromised on what he believed. The paper described him as particular about what he ate, a frequent guest at health homes, and an opponent of centralisation and privatisation.

### The Österåsen experiment

The question that drew most notice during those years was what to do with Österåsen, outside Sollefteå in upper Ådalen.

The complex had been built as a tuberculosis sanatorium, one of three paid for by the national collection of 1897 marking Oscar II's twenty-fifth year on the throne. The County Administrative Board records that the palace architect Fredrik Lilljekvist designed it and that it was inaugurated in 1902. As medicines shortened treatment, it was used for a time as a convalescent home for people with allergies, rheumatism and asthma. In 1977 the buildings were threatened with demolition. After mobilisation that included Sollefteå Municipality, a restoration finished in December 1980, and the County Administrative Board describes the result as one of the country's most modern convalescent centres.

The county council bought the property in 1981. A foundation then ran it as a health home, which the board calls the country's first in county-council ownership. Region Västernorrland dates the opening as a health home to 1982 and describes treatment without drugs, centred on diet, physical activity and stress. The historian Lars Ilshammar wrote in Fokus that rebuilding the old sanatorium as a county-run health home where vegetarian food was served shocked county politicians in the 1970s, and that the young Holmberg became a known and controversial name. Sundsvalls Tidning credited him with getting the health home started under the county council despite opposition, and Andersson recalled that older municipal politicians on the county-council assembly wrinkled their noses when the question reached the agenda.

## Minister for civil affairs

### Appointment and the civil department

After the Swedish Social Democratic Party returned to office, Olof Palme on 8 October 1982 made Bo Holmberg, until then a county-council commissioner in Västernorrland County, minister and head of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs (Kommundepartementet). He held that post through 31 December 1982 and, from 1 January 1983 until 4 October 1988, was minister and head of the Ministry of Civil Affairs (Civildepartementet). The Riksdag biography gives the titles as kommunminister for 1982 and civilminister for 1983–88.

The departmental ordinance of 16 December 1982 (1982:1177), in force on 1 January 1983, abolished the ministries of economic affairs, the budget, trade and municipal affairs and created a [Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance) and the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The Constitutional Committee noted that the budget bill called Civildepartementet the public sector’s department: it took over the municipal ministry, with minor exceptions, and from the budget ministry received rationalisation (including automatic data processing), audit, and state personnel policy. Church affairs lay in the same field. In the Riksdag on 10 November 1982 he was called the new church minister during debate on the reformed Church Assembly, and he later presented bills on the central board of the Church of Sweden and on repealing obsolete church statutes.

He remained after the assassination of Olof Palme. The Riksdag elected Ingvar Carlsson prime minister on 12 March 1986 by 178 votes to none, with 159 abstentions, and Holmberg continued as civil minister. From 6 December 1984 he also chaired the Delegation for Research on the Public Sector, attached to the ministry to document research, connect researchers with state and municipal users, and encourage work on popular government. The biography dates that chairmanship to 1984–88.

### The free-commune experiment

Holmberg first outlined the trial of greater municipal self-government, the frikommunförsök, on 5 October 1983 to a conference of heads of state agencies: the municipal sector was central to public-sector reform, and detailed state regulation of municipalities and county councils should be limited. Asked in the Riksdag that autumn about making Kalmar a “bureaucratic free zone”, he said the government was considering exemptions so that local bodies could find less bureaucratic forms fitted to local needs. Preparation was given to the State–Municipal Commission (Stat–kommunberedningen), which he had been authorised to convene in March 1983.

The commission reported in February 1984 (Ds C 1984:1) without formal consultation. On 22 March, with Holmberg as presenting minister, the government submitted proposition 1983/84:152: a four-year trial in at most nine municipalities and three county councils, allowed to depart from state rules in order to adapt organisation locally, use resources more effectively and improve coordination. The bill also proposed a freer committee structure and power for the government to depart from conditions previously fixed by the Riksdag. The Riksdag approved the guidelines on 1 June 1984 and passed the Act on experimental activity with a freer municipal committee organisation, to run until the end of 1988.

The authorities named were Ale, Bräcke, Gnosjö, Haninge, Helsingborg, Sandviken, Tyresö, Varberg and Örebro, and the county councils of Göteborg and Bohus, Jämtland and Örebro. Only the executive board or committee, the folk-high-school board and the election committee stayed compulsory. By SOU 1988:26, in April 1988, they had advanced 284 proposals; about three quarters were met wholly or partly, or needed no change in state rules, and about two hundred trials were under way. In March 1988 the Riksdag extended the freer committee rules by three years and opened them to more municipalities. The report also compared trials in Denmark, Norway and Finland.

### Renewal, resistance and departure

On 26 May 1983 the government authorised Holmberg to appoint a commission on municipal democracy, popular movements and user influence (brukarinflytande). Lars Eric Ericsson, a municipal commissioner, chaired it from 1 June. The directives treated self-government as a basis of Swedish popular government and noted that municipalities and county councils then used about two thirds of public-sector resources. Greater responsibility, they said, must not mean running down services or making them depend on purchasing power rather than need. The Democracy Commission (Demokratiberedningen) was also to sketch a new municipal act as a framework law reducing detailed state regulation; that sketch was SOU 1985:29, with the main report SOU 1985:28, *Aktivt folkstyre i kommuner och landsting*.

In a 2010 memorial in *Fokus*, the historian Lars Ilshammar described Palme’s task for Holmberg as reform of a cumbersome public sector through local solutions, deeper democracy and cooperative services, with the citizen placed before the customer, rather than through privatisation. He wrote that the attempt made strong enemies and few friends, won only half-hearted support from cabinet colleagues, and challenged trade-union interests. By the late 1980s, in that account, fashion had turned to slimming the public sector and modelling it on private business, a turn Holmberg would not join; after the 1988 election he had to leave.

On 4 October 1988, opening the new session, Carlsson announced that Bengt K. Å. Johansson would head Civildepartementet, with wages and prices, pensions, structural questions, municipalities, the police and automatic data processing. [Margot Wallström](/people/margot-wallstrom) became a minister without portfolio in the same ministry, for consumer policy, youth, popular movements, gender equality and church questions. Holmberg’s term ended that day.

## The Riksdag and the social committee

### Mandate for Västernorrland

Bo Holmberg was an ordinary member of the Riksdag for the Västernorrland County constituency from 29 September 1985 to 29 June 1996, for the Swedish Social Democratic Party. After the election of 15 September 1985 he was listed among the county's Social Democratic members, and the biography he gave the Riksdag names Härnösand as his home. Because he was still a minister, the substitute Barbro Nilsson was called on 30 September 1985 to take his place in the chamber until he left the Ministry of Civil Affairs on 4 October 1988. The register then shows an unbroken mandate through the terms that began in 1988, 1991 and 1994.

The Riksdag links him to 268 motions from 1988/89 to 1994/95, many of them filed with other [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) from the county. In motion 1994/95:T314, "Vägarna i Västernorrland", he and four colleagues sought national priority for the county's road grants, an evaluation of the Road Administration's reorganisation and of competitive tendering for maintenance, and repeal of the corporatisation of its production from 1 January 1996. They argued that one of the country's worst road networks, and shorter storage times for pulpwood, made the question a national export interest as well as a local one.

### The Committee on Health and Welfare

From the autumn of 1988 he served on the Committee on Health and Welfare: vice chair from 10 October 1988 to 29 September 1991, chair from 7 October 1991 to 1 October 1994, and vice chair again from 11 October 1994 to 29 June 1996. His biography says he was a member through the sessions 1988/89–1995/96. The assignment list nevertheless keeps an ordinary membership to 4 October 1998, the end of that electoral term, while the vice-chair entry and the biography end with the mandate in June 1996.

In report 1990/91:SoU9, which he attended as vice chair, the committee proposed that from 1 January 1992 municipalities provide special housing for elderly and disabled people, take over local nursing homes used for somatic long-term care, and provide health care in those settings except physicians' services. As chair he signed report 1992/93:SoU19 on 20 April 1993, recommending the government's bill on support and service for certain people with disabilities, including a rights law and assistance compensation, and a statement on closing care homes and special hospitals. Holmberg and the other Social Democratic members reserved their position on the welfare-policy basis of disability policy, on daily activities, on the closing timetable and on special transport.

In January 1994 he asked the Folkpartiet minister Bo Könberg whether Malmö could be given a dispensation from the family-doctor act. Könberg replied that Malmö had not applied and that the government could not grant one. Holmberg said a committee visit had found cross-party concern that the reform would narrow primary care organised in health centres, although both sides accepted that people who wished to should be able to register with a doctor. The biography also records the chairmanship of the psychiatry inquiry in 1990–91, membership of the [National Council](/organizations/national-council) on Medical Ethics from 1989, and membership of the Committee on the Financing and Organisation of Health and Medical Care (HSU 2000) in 1992–94 and 1995–96. The Riksdag's account of HSU 2000, appointed on 12 March 1992, lists him only from 1 February 1995 to 1 December 1996.

### Other parliamentary roles

The Riksdag elected him to the War Delegation, the Speaker and 50 members who can take the Riksdag's place in war or danger of war, from 17 October 1988 to 29 September 1991 and from 17 October 1994 to 29 June 1996. The biography records him as a deputy in the Speaker's Conference in 1988/89–1990/91 and 1994/95–1995/96, and as a full member in 1991/92–1993/94, the sessions in which he chaired the social committee. Each session the Riksdag elects 20 members and 20 substitutes to its delegation to the [Nordic Council](/organizations/nordic-council); he was a substitute from 17 October 1994 to 7 November 1995, and from 1994 to 1996 he sat on the board of the Social Democratic parliamentary group. The mandate, the second vice-chairmanship and the second War Delegation term ended on 29 June 1996, the year that biography records his appointment as governor of Södermanland County.

## The psychiatry inquiry

### Mandate and chairmanship

On 11 May 1989 the government authorised Sven Hulterström, Minister for Health and Social Affairs, to appoint a special investigator on service, support and care for people with mental disorders. The former director-general Maj-Britt Sandlund took the assignment, and the inquiry (S 1989:01) worked as Mentalservicekommittén under dir. 1989:22. On 15 November 1990 Minister Ingela Thalén converted it into a parliamentary committee, the Psykiatriutredningen, under dir. 1990:71, focused on responsibility, living conditions and the shift from inpatient to outpatient care.

Bo Holmberg, a Social Democratic member of the Riksdag, was chair from 1 December 1990. After the 1991 change of government he was relieved of the chair on 25 November 1991 and made an ordinary member; Sten Svensson of the [Moderate Party](/organizations/moderate-party) became chair the same day. His Riksdag biography lists both roles as 1990–91, but he signed the final report, which the members supported unanimously. *Välfärd och valfrihet – service, stöd och vård för psykiskt störda* (SOU 1992:73) went to Minister Bo Könberg at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs on 1 September 1992. The later bill dated the submission to December 1992, which Holmberg corrected in a follow-up motion.

### Findings and proposals

Long-term and severe disorder was [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of gravity. Housing, work, social contacts and everyday finances were clearly worse than for the population at large. Psychiatric beds had fallen from about 35,000 in the late 1960s to about 14,500 in 1991, yet about half were occupied by stays of more than a year, so closed care still functioned as housing. Municipalities rarely counted the group as disabled, and certifying doctors judged that about 30 per cent of those granted a disability pension might have retained more work capacity with better rehabilitation.

The municipal social welfare committee would initiate, plan and coordinate measures through an individual plan, and the group would have a statutory right to a personal ombudsman. A binding municipal payment responsibility would cover people who had spent a long period in inpatient psychiatry, were judged medically ready for discharge and lacked housing—an incentive, parallel to the Ädel reform, to replace institutional beds as part of wider deinstitutionalisation. County councils would keep psychiatric treatment; other proposals covered occupation, work, the social-insurance offices and support for relatives.

### Reform and later criticism

The bill *Psykiskt stördas villkor* (prop. 1993/94:218), signed on 24 March 1994 by Prime Minister [Carl Bildt](/people/carl-bildt) and Könberg, followed the inquiry on several points. The Riksdag approved the social committee's proposals on 2 June 1994, and the amended Social Services Act took effect on 1 January 1995. Municipal planning was to cover mental as well as physical disability, and municipalities had to pay for certain patients in continuous inpatient care for at least three months whom a specialist judged medically finished with that care. A personal ombudsman was a three-year trial, not an immediate right, and any widening of the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS) was postponed. It proposed 1,200 million kronor in extra state grants for 1995–1997. In a motion of 26 April 1994 Holmberg welcomed the municipal duty and the grants but criticised the delay, the weak rehabilitation policy and the limited right to daily activity under LSS.

The National Board of Health and Welfare's 1999 evaluation, *Välfärd och valfrihet?*, found a good start that had not settled, and noted that specialised psychiatry itself had not been reformed. Much housing and daily occupation had moved to the municipalities, but individual planning was rare and disability pensions for mental disorders rose sharply in the 1990s. An inspection in 2002–2004 found that municipalities could usually offer occupation and housing, yet half had not mapped needs and nearly half of 462 reviewed individuals lacked occupation.

On 12 October 2003, a month after the murder of his wife, Foreign Minister Anna Lindh, Holmberg, then Governor of Södermanland County, told TV4 that care and social services had very large deficiencies and that the reform decisions had not been carried out. He called for state responsibility, abolition of the county councils and a review of municipal self-government, and said the murder would "hardly" have happened if care had functioned. *Ambition och ansvar* (SOU 2006:100) later found that much of the 1995 work had been project-based and that collaboration had clarified boundaries rather than produced joint responsibility; it did not propose a single provider.

## Governor of Södermanland

### Appointment and the post-crisis county

The Social Democrat Bo Holmberg left the Riksdag on 29 June 1996 and was Governor (*landshövding*) of Södermanland County from 1996 until 30 June 2005. On the county administrative board’s list he stands between Ivar Nordberg (1990–1996) and Bo Könberg (2006–2012).

The government appoints the governor, who heads the County Administrative Board, represents the government in the county, coordinates state activity and reports on the county’s needs. The board sits at the county residence, Stora torget 13 in Nyköping. The building, from 1806 and a state listed building owned by Statens fastighetsverk, had its representation floor restored in 1996 after years as offices. A governor’s dwelling there dates only from 2020. Holmberg’s family lived in Nyköping; when he left he said they would stay another year so that their son David could finish compulsory school, and that they already had a flat in Stockholm. From 1996 he was also chair of the county labour board (*länsarbetsnämnden*), according to the biography he supplied for *Fakta om folkvalda*.

The county was still marked by the crisis of the early 1990s. Statistics Sweden recorded 257,383 inhabitants in the county at the end of 1996 and 255,890 at the end of 1999. Eskilstuna municipality, the largest, fell from 88,688 to a low of 88,027 in 1998.

### Samling Sörmland and regional cooperation

Peter Eklund, planning director at the county administrative board, said after Holmberg’s death that the governor had been unusually hands-on, had become popular with business, and had tried to offer hope instead of talking about how bad things were. Eklund credited him with starting Samling Sörmland, a gathering of municipalities, the Church of Sweden, companies and authorities, meant to get them pulling in the same direction. He also said Holmberg worked early for cooperation among municipalities in Mälardalen so that they would form one region. A body for that wider area already existed: the Council for the Stockholm Mälar Region (*Mälardalsrådet*) was established in 1992 by regional politicians as a membership organisation for municipalities and county councils around Stockholm and Lake Mälaren.

In April 2005 Holmberg told *Svenska Dagbladet* that this was what he was most satisfied with: he had helped press the view that Södermanland had to see itself as part of a region growing together. He would not say what he was least satisfied with, called the years in the county the most rewarding of his career, and said he would miss Nyköping’s small-town scale and cultural life. The family kept a summer house there.

### State agencies and local recovery

On 13 March 1997 Prime Minister [Göran Persson](/people/goran-persson) and Industry and Trade Minister Anders Sundström proposed, in the bill *En uthållig energiförsörjning*, a new central energy agency from 1 January 1998, to take over most central energy functions and carry out most of a new energy-policy programme. The bill named no seat. By 31 October 1997 *Dagens Nyheter* reported that Nutek employees were worried ahead of the move to Eskilstuna, and that the new authority still had no director. Statens energimyndighet later dated its formation to 1 January 1998, with the task of implementing the programme the Riksdag adopted that spring. A May 1999 publication is signed in Eskilstuna by Director-General Thomas Korsfelt, at Box 310, 631 04 Eskilstuna. Eklund later said the siting was largely thanks to Holmberg’s contacts, eased by his marriage to Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. That is one official’s retrospective judgement; at the time the move was reported as a government relocation that Stockholm staff resisted.

The demographic recovery was uneven and slower than a late-1990s turning point suggests. Eskilstuna rose only from 88,027 at the end of 1998 to 88,138 a year later, then to 91,635 at the end of 2005; the county, after its 1999 low, stood at 261,895. Katrineholm municipality kept falling, from 32,992 at the end of 1996 to 32,185 at the end of 2005. On 23 October 2001 Scania said it would move bus-chassis development and production to Södertälje, about 550 of some 850 local bus jobs, offering work there instead of redundancy notices. The same morning FCI gave notice to just over 320 employees, and Flextronics had already given notice to 508 and decided to close. *Aftonbladet* put about 1,600 jobs at risk. Persson, whose home town it was, said he was extremely disappointed. A 2010 *Svenska Dagbladet* profile placed a loss of 1,500 Scania and Ericsson jobs in a single year among the conditions of 1996. Losses on that scale are those reported in October 2001.

He left on 30 June 2005. From 1 July the government employed him as a director-general in the Government Offices—the fourteenth such post—on Mälardalen, at 66,000 kronor a month. *Helsingborgs Dagblad*, citing TT, noted that most of those posts were held by former Social Democratic ministers or senior politicians. Political scientist Tommy Möller said appointments of this kind had become so common that a high post, a title and a high salary for a Social Democrat, or for someone else, barely caused a reaction. On 13 October 2005 the government named Könberg, parliamentary group leader of the Liberals since 1998 and a minister for health care and social insurance in 1991–1994, governor from the new year. An acting county director held the duties in between.

## Later work in the Government Offices

### Director-general for Mälardalen

In late April 2005 the government decided to employ Bo Holmberg, a former minister, as a director-general in the Government Offices. He left the governorship of Södermanland County on 30 June and started on 1 July, working on Mälardalen, the region around Lake Mälaren, at 66,000 kronor a month. TT reported that this was the fourteenth director-generalship there, most of them held by former Social Democratic ministers or other senior politicians. Tommy Möller, a political scientist, said such appointments had become more common, and that there was little reaction when a Social Democrat, "or someone else", again received a high post, a fine title and a high salary. Holmberg said he and his two sons would stay in Nyköping for a year before moving to Stockholm.

He told *Svenska Dagbladet* that population pressure on Stockholm, which he put at 800,000 people over 30 years, required regional enlargement, and that as governor he had worked to place Södermanland inside a growing Mälardalen. His later East Link report referred to an earlier assignment, *Alternativa förslag till samverkan i Mälardalen*, which treated Stockholm and Mälardalen as a national growth engine.

### The East Link assignment

On 20 December 2005 the government appointed Holmberg negotiator for the East Link (Ostlänken), a planned double-track railway of about 140 kilometres between Järna and Linköping. He was to discuss with Banverket and other local and regional interests whether work on the Stockholm–Nyköping–Linköping corridor could be brought forward, and to negotiate co-financing, inside the 2004–2015 rail plan. The plan included a rebuilt Norrköping yard in a first stage and 2.4 billion kronor for a start in 2010–2015, with about 9 billion kronor after 2015. It was to tie Östergötland closer to Stockholm and Mälardalen and to relieve the Western Main Line, as part of the Southern Main Line corridor. Infrastructure minister Ulrica Messing said the aim was to hasten the investment. The deadline then reported was 15 November 2006; the final report records an extension to 15 December. Asked that week about a public-private partnership, Messing said on 10 January 2006 that no separate inquiry was planned.

An interim report of 31 August 2006, with Annelie Nylander as secretary, concluded, *Norrköpings Tidningar* reported, that more efficient planning could advance the work by four years. In September *Södermanlands Nyheter* reported that Holmberg was sharply critical of the delay and wanted building to start in 2010.

The report of 15 December 2006, published on 21 December, was titled *Det är möjligt att med fyra år tidigarelägga Ostlänken, till 2010 – både ett järnvägs- och samhällsbygge*. It argued that parallel planning by state and municipalities, without changing the law, could move the start from about 2014 to 2010, barring major unexpected problems. He asked for 120 million kronor for Banverket and 10 million for three county boards, from sums already in the 2010–2014 budget, without that grant itself deciding to build. A new Banverket study, he wrote, showed higher socio-economic returns than earlier work, the largest rail passenger volumes in Mälardalen, less road traffic and wider labour markets, especially for women. In June 2006 the municipalities took main responsibility for stations, and the owners of Stockholm Skavsta Airport signed a letter of intent. For the railway he set out appropriations or a loan from the Swedish National Debt Office, a partnership on the model of the Arlanda Line, or a direct grant to Banverket.

## Personal life

### First marriage

In 1968 Bo Holmberg married Margareta Sjölund, born in 1944. The biographical handbook *Vem är det* then listed him as a minister living in Härnösand, and Sjölund as a care assistant. The couple had three children, whose names are not given in the handbook entries or in the main newspaper accounts of his life. In the autumn of 1987, when his relationship with Anna Lindh was already widely known among colleagues and journalists, he divorced the wife who remained in Härnösand. He later described that divorce as one of the heavier passages of his life. From the 1993 edition onward, *Vem är det* recorded only the marriage to Lindh.

### Marriage to Anna Lindh

Holmberg and Lindh met while he was minister for civil affairs and she chaired the Social Democratic Youth League (SSU). The historian Lars Ilshammar later described a mid-1980s party they gave at a summer house in Fällöviken, south of Härnösand, when Holmberg, then in his early forties, was already a prominent Social Democrat. A photograph from the party congress in September 1987 shows them dancing: she had just turned 30, and he was 44. [Mona Sahlin](/people/mona-sahlin), a close friend of Lindh, recalled her arriving flushed to say she had fallen in love with “Bosse”. Within the party the relationship was treated as something of a scandal, because he was still married.

They soon moved into a two-room flat on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, and later to Färgargårdstorget on Södermalm, Lindh’s part of the city. Their son David was born in 1990. Holmberg and Lindh married in 1991, and Filip was born in 1994. When Filip was about six months old, Lindh took her first cabinet post, as minister for the environment; four years later Göran Persson made her foreign minister.

The public balance had already shifted. After the 1988 election Ingvar Carlsson left Holmberg out of the new government, which he took hard, while Lindh’s career was only beginning. Ilshammar wrote that once she was environment minister in 1994 and foreign minister four years later, she stood at the centre and he became the accompanying husband, and that the relationship held.

In 1996, when Holmberg was appointed governor of Södermanland County, the family moved to Nyköping. Reports place them at the governor’s residence; a 2003 interview was conducted in the governor’s villa, a short way beyond the residence itself. They kept the Södermalm flat for nights in Stockholm. A nanny helped with the children and the housework. Friends told *Aftonbladet* that Lindh still held the household together when she was travelling, and that the children came first when she was home, while Holmberg often gave representational dinners without her. As the foreign minister’s husband he went with her to royal dinners, Nobel banquets and an occasional journey, including one to Egypt, but was otherwise outside her official travel. When she hosted European Union foreign ministers she placed the meeting in Nyköping, so that his office as governor gave him a formal part.

They talked politics and did not always agree; she listened without necessarily changing her mind. They liked to cook and to give dinners, sometimes drawing lots for who would stand at the stove. By 2003, Ilshammar wrote, they had grown together and complemented one another in private as well as in public. Lindh had told Holmberg, “Vår bästa tid är nu” — our best time is now.

## The murder of Anna Lindh and its aftermath

### September 2003

On the afternoon of 10 September 2003, Foreign Minister Anna Lindh was stabbed repeatedly while shopping, without a bodyguard and with a friend, in the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in central Stockholm. She died at Karolinska University Hospital early the next morning.

Holmberg, then Governor of Södermanland County, told Dagens Nyheter that he last saw her around lunchtime, hurrying past the residence in Nyköping. Shortly after four the friend telephoned with Lindh's instruction that he look after the children and not come. He went home to their sons, David, then 13, and Filip, then 9, and reached Karolinska about 20:30. He said he lay on the floor of the relatives' room during the operation; a letter from the boys was never read. She died at 05:29.

In interviews published on 28 September he said that in the evenings he lit a candle before a photograph of her. He told DN that Lindh had said to the boys that a person who feels hatred and wants revenge is not a good person, and that he had to swallow such feelings. He criticised the Swedish Security Service, which had refused a bodyguard when it saw no threat, telling TV4 that she ought to have had a guard more often and DN that guards at NK would have prevented the attack. Pictures of her on a stretcher had distressed him, and he tried to keep newspapers from the children.

On 19 September a public memorial in the Blue Hall of Stockholm City Hall drew about 1,300 guests; Prime Minister Göran Persson spoke first. The next day's funeral was private, at the family's wish, at Ersta Church on Södermalm, conducted by Thorbjörn Larsson, a priest and family friend. Holmberg had chosen the hymns and let Aftonbladet publish the order of service; he and the children then took a private leave. On 23 September the three thanked supporters and said she would be buried at Katarina Cemetery.

### Public role after the murder

On 17 September the Swedish Social Democratic Party announced Stiftelsen Anna Lindhs minnesfond, to work against violence and for democracy, human rights and "a sustainable development for a good life", with grants to children, young people, women and organisations. Former prime minister Ingvar Carlsson was named chairman, and Holmberg accepted a place on the board. The foundation describes itself as politically independent and financed by gifts. It is separate from the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures, an intergovernmental body created in Alexandria in 2005.

Mijailo Mijailović admitted the stabbing. Stockholm District Court gave him life imprisonment for murder on 23 March 2004; in July the Svea Court of Appeal substituted forensic psychiatric care. Holmberg and the sons also supported the prosecution in the Supreme Court of Sweden. On 2 December 2004 that court restored the life sentence: it found no serious mental disorder of a psychotic kind, held the killing to be intentional murder, and, after Mijailović conceded the claim, set each son's damages at 100,000 kronor. Holmberg wrote that, for him and the children, it felt good the case was over, and that the court had found the killer was not seriously mentally disturbed and that the crime was murder. The missing motive was a drawback: "If one is not seriously mentally disturbed, one has a motive."

Larsson later said the death changed Holmberg's whole daily life, that part of his social world disappeared, and that he took on a responsibility for the boys he had not had before: "It affected him totally." In February 2010 the historian Lars Ilshammar wrote that Holmberg could not carry the grief in public, that his appetite for debate died away, and that he withdrew into loneliness.

## Death and assessments

### Last years and death

After the murder of Anna Lindh in September 2003, Holmberg lived increasingly withdrawn in his flat on Södermalm in Stockholm. The family friend and priest Thorbjörn Larsson said her death changed his daily life, that part of his social life disappeared, and that responsibility for their sons affected him completely. The previous year he had fallen and broken a hip; he walked on crutches, was in severe pain, had rheumatism, took strong painkillers, and received home help. A neighbour had last seen him about a week earlier, waiting for a taxi, and Bo Hermansson, after speaking with him in January, said he was not shocked, though it came sooner than he expected.

Home-help staff found him dead on a Thursday, seated on the sofa with the television on and a meal set out; SOS Alarm was called at 13:47. Detective superintendent Robert Frankesson said city police opened a death inquiry rather than a criminal investigation, because the cause was unclear, and sent the body to the forensic medicine station in Solna for autopsy. Reporting on 12 February 2010 placed that Thursday on the 11th: SVT, citing the family friend Eva Franchell, said he died on Thursday, and *Expressen* wrote that he was found dead at home "yesterday, Thursday". Franchell told *Aftonbladet* he had "died quietly and calmly at home yesterday", and gave the same Thursday to *Svenska Dagbladet*; Lars Ilshammar, writing in *Fokus* on 19 February, also dated the death to 11 February. The grave register of Kramfors pastorat instead records 10 February 2010, a difference the news reports did not reconcile. He was 67; the sons he had with Lindh were 19 and 16.

### Burial and contemporary assessments

That register lists Bo Lindor Holmberg, born 17 November 1942, as buried at Gudmundrå cemetery in Kramfors pastorat, plot 1 05U 112, with his parents Hans Bertil Holmberg (1920–1992) and Helga Linnéa Holmberg (1923–2005).

Göran Persson, through the Swedish Social Democratic Party press office, called him the first and clearest voice for renewing the public sector, from his years as county-council commissioner in Västernorrland County, with a strong feeling for the vulnerable. Ulrica Messing remembered an eager debater to the last, and the infrastructure inquiry she gave him as governor of Södermanland County before the 2006 election; her sharpest grief, she said, was for the children. His successor as governor, Bo Könberg, said Holmberg had played a large part in building opinion for Ostlänken, in that post and later as a one-person inquiry. [Jan Eliasson](/people/jan-eliasson), chair of the Anna Lindh Memorial Fund, called the death deeply tragic, while noting that Holmberg had still worked for the fund from the start, and Mona Sahlin remembered a *folkrörelsesosse*, a popular-movement Social Democrat, inseparable in memory from Lindh.

Bosse Ringholm, who had known him since the Social Democratic youth league in the 1960s, called him withdrawn but reflective and said he probably changed more on becoming a minister in the 1980s than after Lindh's murder; Olof Palme's brief to reshape the administration had, he said, come unexpectedly because Holmberg was so young. Kjell-Olof Feldt said Lindh had been the stronger and had run the family, so her death left him duties he had not carried before. Ilshammar wrote that the push for local solutions, deeper democracy and cooperative public services, rather than privatisation, made many enemies and few friends, won only half-hearted support from colleagues, and came to nothing. Holmberg had to leave the government after the 1988 election, Ilshammar wrote, and after 2003 "life had ended for Bo Holmberg long before".

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/bo-holmberg