Room Strömstedt

About

The conference room Strömstedt is situated just before the banqueting room, where the morning coffee is served. A nice room for pleasant meetings.

History

The successful writer and former jailbird Lasse Strömstedt spent four of eight prison years behind Långhlmen’s bars. It was in the 50s and 60s and the old worn-out prison was overcrowded to the point of bursting. “There was not enough work for everyone and there was sufficient time to plan escapes,” says Lasse in his memoirs trilogy Brott & Skratt (Crime & Laughter). Of his eight prison-break attempts, only one was successful… but: ”Planning the escapes was a way to survive,” he explained during one of his numerous lectures for our guests at Långholmen Conference. But every cloud has a silver lining. Långholmen was a school for good and bad. The time for reading stirred one’s interest in literature.

Lasse was a fixer and soon a prison newspaper and a literary circle, the Green Snake, came into being. A surprising number of current literary giants visited the Långholm Prison, i.a. Harry and Moa Martinsson, Eyvind Johnson and Lasse’s role model, Jan Fridegård, who had been in Långholmen himself.

The sequence of returns to the slammer and miscellaneous jobs, lasted until 1971. It was then that Lasse Strömstedt brought his “thuggery” to an end and started a new career as an author, actor, lecturer and debater. Together with Christer Dahl he wrote the best-sellers Grundbulten (English title: The Cornerstone) and Lyftet (English title: The Score) under the pseudonym Kenneth Ahl. In several books he describes with an almost uncanny ability and warm, burlesque sense of humour mankind’s less appealing sides.

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