[ad_1]
The octagon adorned with a crown rises above Medborgarplatsen. A window is closed, a curtain is drawn. Even though it’s late summer, the building casts ominous shadows on the Fatbur stairs.
And after reading three current books on the subject of the fate of strong women, I know this is a special place. “All That Was Mine” by Cissi Wallin, “The Year with 13 Months” by Åsa Linderborg and “The Destroyer” by Christina Herrström: all three are skillfully told, autobiography books whose stories are strangely intertwined.
The three women they move exactly within the radius of Södermalm when their lives crumble as relentlessly as a Greek tragedy. Two of the novels also take place in the same building, the Söder or Tornet tower, on Medborgarplatsen.
Christina Herrström.
Photo: Anders Hansson
The 25-story Söder Tower was built in 1997 and was named Haglund’s Staff, in honor of the fan behind the project, the moderate Sune Haglund. Originally the tower was intended to be 40 stories high, but the Stockholm city planning office was not so keen on a “lower Manhattan” and halted the plans.
In “The Destroyer”, which has the Söder tower on the cover, Christina Herrström meets a choir leader in Allhelgonakyrkan who has nowhere to live and decides to help him and opens the door to his home in Tornet. A decision that will have inconceivable consequences because man turns out to be anything but sent by God.
Åsa Linderborg, the girl who grew up with a working-class alcoholic father who later became head of culture at Aftonbladet, shares in “The Year at 13 Months” his time between his southern lodge and the flat of his love which, symbolically, is in the top of the Tower.
In “The Destroyer”, Christina Herrström is 12 stories below. In her beautiful apartment, where she “sees the accessories of the wings on the back of the seagulls,” she undergoes a normalization process that looks like something out of a horror movie. It’s heartbreaking to watch the woman behind the feminist cult series “Glappet” collapse behind the carefree facade.
Photo: Pontus Lundahl / TT, Pontus Lundahl / TT
Social media profile Cissi Wallin points to a colleague of Åsa Linderborg as a rapist and starts the whole Swedish subway movement that is so fatal to Linderborg.
Is this too unstable period described in “The year of the 13 months”, but despite the fact that in her role as cultural director she is one of the biggest critics of the metropolitan movement, she is accused of killing a theater director.
Åsa Linderborg.
Photo: Lisa Mattisson
It is painful to read Linderborg’s ruthless examination of herself as an old woman, when the one she loves has abandoned her. How she, as the sole employee of Aftonbladet, takes the blame for the death of the theater director in public.
It is equally uncomfortable to have the feeling of mistrust and freezing if you are a victim of rape after a night at the home of an acclaimed journalist, which is Wallin’s story in “All That Was Mine.”
When I’m in Medborgarplatsen and looking at Södermalm’s own phallus symbol, Tornet, I will remember that I was actually there once a long time ago, at a party. I remember thinking that the dizzying aesthetic of American Psycho was not at all pleasant. But I can definitely understand the temptation to live in a building that associates myths like the Tower of Babel, Rapunzel or modern variants like “The tale of the ring” and “The life and wishes of a devil.” A symbol of chaos and control, power and human arrogance. Or why not patriarchy.
Both Linderborg and Herrström eventually lose access to the majestic Tower. Wallin is convicted of defamation and is assigned the role of villain. That the fate of the three women feels almost predetermined is perhaps the saddest of all. Snap, snap, cop, now the story was over.
Read more Chronicles of Catia Hultquist.
