With no cash available, the robberies disappeared. Denmark has gone a year without a bank robbery for the first time in its modern history. In 2000, relatively peaceful Denmark was still recording 221 armed robberies of banking institutions, or about two every three days.
But with the gradual disappearance of cash from most bank branches, there have been fewer than 10 robberies a year since 2017. And no raids were observed in 2022, which one banking historian said was unheard of.
“It’s just fantastic because it’s an absolutely huge burden for the employees involved when it happens,” said Steen Lund Olsen, vice president of Denmark’s largest banking organization, Finansforbundet.
Scandinavia, scene of one of the most famous robberies
In a Scandinavian society that is becoming increasingly cashless, Denmark’s largest bank, Danske Bank, has only two branches with banknotes, one in Copenhagen and the other in Aarhus, the country’s second largest city, according to Finansforbundet.
In its history, Scandinavia was the scene of one of the most famous bank robberies. In August 1973, in a square in central Stockholm, Sweden, a robber had held four bank employees hostage for several days after failing to steal the agency’s loot.
But after their release, none of them wanted to testify against thief Jan-Erik Olsson, in a wave of sympathy that psychiatrists then dubbed “Stockholm Syndrome.”