World: A Royal Funeral

In the pale sun of a late afternoon, a carriage of Sweden’s royal household came to a stop before a weathered granite tombstone inscribed HJALMAR HAMMARSKJOLD FAMILY GRAVE. Six pallbearers in tall top hats and long black coats lifted down a mahogany casket, lowered it silently into an open grave. An eddy of wind blew a few leaves into the grave. “Sleep you now in the garden of heaven,” said Lutheran Archbishop Gunnar Hultgren. “Rest in peace, Dag Hammarskjold.”

Thus Dag Hammarskjold was buried, with ceremony usually accorded to Swedish kings, at Uppsala, the city where he grew up and studied. It had been a long way home: 5,000 miles from Ndola. the small Rhodesian town where the Secretary-General had been bound to negotiate peace in Katanga. When the body arrived in Stockholm aboard an American DC-yC, 250,000 mourners gathered for a torchlight procession. At Uppsala the closed casket, nearly buried in flowers, was placed in the 13th century Lutheran cathedral, where 15,000 townfolk came to say their farewells.

When the funeral ended, church bells tolled from Malmo to Malmberget; then everything in Sweden stopped abruptly for a moment of silence. Among the 2,000 invited guests was the Ambassador of Russia, which in the last year of his life had denounced Hammarskjold as “a bloody-handed lackey of the colonial powers.” President Kennedy sent Lyndon Johnson, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Said Johnson: “The name of Dag Hammarskjold has entered history—and history confers its highest honors for heroes of peace.” Dr. Ralph Bunche, who as a U.N. under secretary worked closely with Hammarskjold, was near tears. Said he: “We are like a crew that has lost its captain.”

Sweden’s 81-year-old Archbishop Emeritus Erling Eidem, who buried Hammarskjold’s statesman father eight years ago, conducted the service with quavering hand. Opera Singer Elisabeth Soderstrom sang I Know That My Redeemer Liveth, and the Lutheran choir Work, for the Night Is Coming. Near the casket was a wreath of daffodils and two red roses. Sent by Hammarskjold’s family, it bore a one-word inscription: “Why?”