Xanor

Xanor is the medication that turns a question about Karl Lundström’s credibility into a conflict between legal caution and Sofia Zetterlund’s clinical judgment. Its importance in the case lies not in a detailed account of its medical action, but in the competing conclusions drawn from its presence: Kenneth von Kwist uses it to discredit Lundström’s statements and stop further inquiry, while Sofia maintains that the small dose does not explain away what he told her.

The medication and the dispute

The issue emerges when Kenneth von Kwist tells Jeanette Kihlberg that Lundström was under the influence of strong medication during his interviews. He initially leaves the point unexplained, then identifies the drug as Xanor. The revelation reframes the reliability of Lundström’s statements as a question about the conditions in which they were made, rather than only about their content.

Von Kwist argues that Jeanette should not take Lundström’s claims seriously. To make his case, he invokes Thomas Quick, whom he describes as having confessed under Xanor to a sweeping range of murders, joking that Quick might also have claimed responsibility for the Palme murder, the Kennedy assassination, and the Rwandan genocide. The comparison gives Xanor an immediate association with unreliable confession. It is part of a forceful attempt to close the matter: Von Kwist concludes by forbidding Jeanette to pursue it further.

The passage does not establish that Lundström’s statements were false, nor does it give a general account of Xanor’s effects. Instead, it shows how the drug’s association with Quick becomes an argument about whether testimony can be trusted. Von Kwist treats that association as sufficient reason to dismiss Lundström’s claims; the later discussion makes clear that Sofia does not accept the comparison as decisive.

Lundström’s interviews and the court

Xanor also bears on how the courts assess Sofia’s work with Lundström. Her recommendation had been that he receive a prison sentence rather than secure psychiatric care. She had found nothing in their conversations to justify secure psychiatric treatment and understood his opinions as arising from ideological conviction. The district court, however, was expected to place him in a mental health facility.

The reason given is that Lundström had been under the influence of Xanor both in his interviews and during his sessions at Huddinge Hospital. Consequently, Sofia’s conclusions are not regarded as valid grounds for a court judgment, and her conversations with him are, in practical terms, dismissed as useless. The medication therefore has an institutional consequence beyond the dispute over whether one particular statement was accurate: it weakens the legal standing of the professional assessment based on those conversations.

That consequence sharpens the difference between the court’s view and Sofia’s. She recognizes that medication was involved, but believes that what Lundström told her was not concocted under its influence. The account thus distinguishes the fact of medication from the separate judgment that his ideas were produced by medication. The former is accepted; the latter remains contested.

Sofia and Jeanette assess the dose

When Jeanette asks Sofia directly whether the medication should trouble her, Sofia answers that the dose was too small to make a decisive difference. She describes it as a very small dose of Xanor and distinguishes it from the much larger dosage associated, in their conversation, with Thomas Quick. Jeanette raises the comparison herself, but Sofia rejects the implication that the two cases can be treated as equivalent simply because the same drug is named.

Sofia’s position does not erase the court’s concern or the fact that Lundström was medicated during the interviews and sessions. Rather, it narrows the question: for her, the presence of Xanor does not by itself invalidate what she heard. She remains convinced that Lundström’s account expressed his own beliefs. He considered himself uniquely able to see the truth, placed strength above other values, and took that belief to justify his privilege to abuse weaker people. Sofia also notes his high regard for his own character and pride in it. These details matter because they locate his statements within an ideological outlook, not merely within a disputed interview condition.

Narrative and evidentiary significance

Xanor functions as a point of pressure on the case’s evidence. For Kenneth von Kwist, its name invokes the danger of false or unreliable confession and supports an order that Jeanette stop investigating. For Sofia, the crucial distinction is dosage: the very small amount Lundström received, she argues, was not enough to decisively account for what he said. The drug consequently becomes a test of how much weight characters assign to context when interpreting testimony.

The disagreement also affects what Jeanette does next. Sofia advises her that questioning Lundström about the dead boys could be worthwhile, reasoning that an opening in one part of the inquiry might lead to another. That advice runs against von Kwist’s prohibition and the court’s dismissal of Sofia’s conclusions. Xanor does not resolve the conflict over Lundström’s credibility; it exposes it. The same fact—the medication—can serve as grounds to discard his statements or as a circumstance that must be weighed without allowing it to replace their content.