[1] Jan-Erik Olsson was a convicted criminal who had disappeared while on furlough from prison and then held up the Kreditbanken bank, taking four hostages in the process.

During the negotiations that followed, Swedish Minister of Justice Lennart Geijer allowed Olsson's former cellmate and friend Clark Olofsson to be brought from prison to the bank.

The counter-intuitive actions of the hostages led to a great deal of academic and public interest in the case, including a 2003 Swedish television film titled Norrmalmstorg, a 2018 Canadian film titled Stockholm and a 2022 Swedish Netflix television series Clark.

One officer, Ingemar Warpefeldt, suffered injuries to his hand after Olsson opened fire,[6] while another was ordered to sit in a chair and sing a song.

[6] Olsson then took four bank employees hostage: Birgitta Lundblad, Elisabeth Oldgren, Kristin Enmark, and Sven Säfström.

[7] He demanded his friend Clark Olofsson be brought there,[8] along with three million Swedish kronor, two guns, bulletproof vests, helmets and a Ford Mustang.

The hostage Kristin Enmark said that she felt safe with Olsson and Olofsson but feared that the police might escalate the situation by using violent methods.

[12] Olsson called Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and said that he would kill the hostages and backed up his threat by grabbing one of them in a stranglehold.

[6] On August 26, the police drilled a hole into the main vault from the apartment above and took a widely circulated photograph of the hostages with Olofsson.

After having been on the run from Swedish authorities for ten years for alleged financial crimes, he turned himself in to police in 2006, only to be told that the charges were no longer being actively pursued.