The relocation of the reliving to the Heath

The relocation of the reliving to the Heath was the government’s attempt to turn an uncontrolled medical emergency into a managed system of separation, care, and eventual rehabilitation. Announced by the Prime Minister on 16 August after the reliving had been moved during the night, the transfer sent them to a facility in a residential area of north-west Stockholm. The public explanation stressed necessity and social inclusion, but the decision also made family access and the separation of the reliving from ordinary society matters of state policy.

Background: an emergency outgrows the hospitals

The relocation followed an awakening that had begun across morgues in the greater Stockholm area. Calls reporting the return of dead relatives overwhelmed the emergency call centre, and Danderyd Hospital’s infectious diseases ward was designated as a temporary gathering place. In the first hours of the crisis, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs formed a provisional command unit with representatives from government departments, police, and medical specialties. Its headquarters became known as the Dead Room.

The temporary arrangement soon came under severe strain. By 01:45, Danderyd had admitted 715 reliving, and disputes—including fistfights—had broken out among staff in direct contact with them. Staff members attributed their conflicts to an apparent ability to read one another’s thoughts. The crisis was therefore not only a question of finding beds: the hospital environment itself had become difficult to manage, while the reliving’s condition unsettled both medical practice and ordinary assumptions about personhood and death.

The military’s intervention added urgency to the search for a larger holding arrangement. Military personnel had gathered outside Danderyd by the time all staff had left the hospital. Against this backdrop, transferring the reliving out of the hospital system offered the government a way to contain the immediate pressures on medical services. The circumstances explain the stated need for separation, but they also establish that the move was made under crisis conditions, with little room for ordinary planning or public scrutiny.

The overnight transfer and the choice of the Heath

At the press conference on the morning of 16 August, the Prime Minister disclosed that military personnel had relocated the reliving during the night. The government described the transfer as a necessary step toward providing proper care. It did not initially identify the destination: when a journalist asked where the reliving had been taken, the Prime Minister paused and deferred the question.

The government’s explanation was that distributing the reliving among several hospitals had first been considered, but would have compromised regular health services and reduced their level of provision. The chosen alternative was a facility where the reliving could be kept separated. The Prime Minister identified the destination as the Heath, a residential area in north-west Stockholm, and said the necessary personnel had been dispatched. Rehabilitation was supposed to begin shortly, with the stated aim of making a place for the reliving in society.

The announcement thus joined two aims that were not necessarily the same: keeping the reliving apart and preparing them for social inclusion. Separation answered an immediate administrative and medical problem, while rehabilitation projected a future beyond containment. At the moment of transfer, however, the government offered the public a destination and a plan rather than evidence that rehabilitation had begun.

Care, confinement, and family access

The press conference framed relocation in the language of care, but questions from journalists exposed the restrictions attached to it. One asked why relatives were not allowed into the area. The Prime Minister conceded that family members would shortly be given the opportunity to see their reliving and regretted that this had taken so long. The restriction had therefore lasted through the period in which the government was organizing the move, leaving relatives outside the area while their returned family members were being managed as a group.

The government then said that visits had not previously been possible but could now be opened to the public. This marked a change in the announced visitation policy, not just a logistical detail: relatives’ access depended on an official decision about whether the area could admit visitors. The promised opening placed family contact alongside separation and rehabilitation as part of the government’s response, while the delay made clear that care, as officially described, did not initially include ordinary access to loved ones.

A letter found in Sten Bergwall’s office gives the decision a stark counterpoint. Its writer says that everything has gone wrong, refuses to take responsibility for a decision believed to be wrong, and warns that it will lead to catastrophe. The letter does not specify its objections in the passage, but its presence beside the announcement prevents the relocation from appearing as an uncontested solution. Official reassurance and private alarm occupy the same unfolding crisis.

Significance

The move to the Heath changed the scale and setting of the emergency. The reliving were no longer being gathered primarily in a hospital ward; they were transferred to a designated facility in a residential area, kept apart under military supervision, and assigned a promised program of rehabilitation. That shift made the crisis a question of public administration and social placement as well as medical care.

The government’s language held containment and belonging in tension. The reliving were to be separated, yet a place was to be made for them in society; relatives had been excluded, yet visits were now announced. These were not resolved outcomes but commitments made at the time of transfer. The relocation is therefore a turning point in the official response: an emergency measure presented as care, accompanied by plans for rehabilitation, and shadowed by uncertainty over whether separation could lead to inclusion.