Karolina Olsson, the girl who slept for 32 years

An accident, a fall, and then silence. For more than thirty years time stood still in the life of Karolina Olsson, nicknamed the “Sleeping Beauty of Oknö”. Hers is one of the most inexplicable stories in medical history, a real “spell” that keeps defying all logic.

It was the winter of 1876, and the cold enveloped the small Swedish island of Oknö. Fourteen-year-old Karolina Olsson, born on 29 October 1861, the second of five children and the only girl, was coming home from the local school, where she also attended catechism lessons, essential in the Lutheran Sweden of the time. Around 18 February 1876, she came home with a swollen, painful face, saying she had slipped while crossing a frozen river. The severe toothache quickly got worse, so much so that just four days later her parents decided to put her to bed for a few days. Karolina fell asleep and did not wake up for a very long time.

Karolina Olsson, 32 years of endless sleep

That night was the beginning of a sleep that would last 32 years and 42 days. At first her parents tried in vain to wake her. Her father, a fisherman, could not afford a doctor, and the family relied on a midwife and the advice of neighbours, who even suggested witchcraft was to blame. Her mother, with incredible dedication, managed to get just two glasses of milk a day down her throat to keep her alive. When the villagers raised money to pay for a doctor, the diagnosis was coma, but every attempt to wake her, with smelling salts and even pins, failed. The case was so unique that the doctor wrote to the editor of Scandinavia’s leading medical journal.

In the years that followed, Karolina became a medical enigma. Doctors from all over Sweden noticed that the girl seemed stuck in a state of hibernation, with minimal growth of hair and nails. Her mother, who looked after her, said that Karolina sometimes had episodes of sleepwalking, sitting up with her eyes closed to mechanically recite the prayers she had learned as a child. In 1892 she was taken to the hospital in Oskarshamn, where doctors tried to wake her with electroconvulsive therapy, finally diagnosing her with hysteria or dementia paralytica, before sending her home, resigned.

The family took on the burden of her care. Her mother looked after her until her death in 1904. After that a housekeeper was hired to help her father care for the “Sleeping Beauty”, whose life had become a shrine of suspended waiting.

The impossible awakening

Then, one Easter morning in 1908, the impossible happened. On 3 April 1908 the housekeeper heard noises from Karolina’s room. Going in, she found the woman, by then 46, awake and sobbing. She was pale, weak and very thin, struggled to stand and to get used to the light, but her health was incredibly good for someone who had spent over three decades lying down.

Karolina was besieged by newspapers and doctors from all over Europe. Psychiatrists immediately noticed that, although she was 46, she looked no older than 25 and her mental abilities were still those of a teenage girl: she could read and write and remembered only the prayers and lessons learned before her fall. She said she had no memory of the years spent asleep. Despite the long years of immobility, Karolina regained her strength and went back to a normal life. She died in her village of Oknö on 5 April 1950, aged 88.

The explanation, a secret never revealed

Karolina Olsson’s case was studied in particular by the psychiatrist Frödeström, who met her in 1910 and in 1912 published a long report entitled La Dormeuse d’Oknö. 21 Ans de Stupeur. Guérison Complète. Frödeström was fascinated by the woman’s behaviour, as she acted like someone much younger than her real age. Talking to the housekeeper and the family, he discovered crucial details: Karolina sometimes got out of bed, she was heard talking, and objects were found moved. In particular, Karolina had cried hysterically at the news of her mother’s death in 1904 and of a brother’s in 1907.

He dismissed the idea that the girl had survived on just two glasses of milk a day, which would have starved her to death. The most widely accepted hypothesis today is that Karolina Olsson did not sleep for all thirty-two years. It is believed that, especially when only her mother was at home (the only one who looked after her physically), Karolina got up, washed, talked and ate in secret, perhaps because of a symbiotic relationship and extreme dependence on her mother’s care. This would explain her survival and why she was in better health than expected.

Some also suggest that the girl had taken refuge in a dissociative state, a kind of flight from the world, but no one has ever been able to prove it. In any case, how much time Karolina Olsson really spent in deep sleep and how much was a psychological self-exile remains the fascinating, indecipherable mystery of the “Sleeping Beauty of Oknö”. Perhaps the truest answer is not medical but poetic: Karolina did not sleep for thirty-two years, she simply lived in a place where time does not pass.

What do you think of this incredible story? Was it a mystery of the mind, a miracle, or is there a scientific explanation that still escapes us? Leave your comment below!

Sources

• Karolina Olsson, Wikipedia
• Frödeström, La Dormeuse d’Oknö. 21 Ans de Stupeur. Guérison Complète, 1912