Left-wing debater Daniel Suhonen, head of the trade union think tank Katalys, has worked with Oscarson since the beginning of the 2000s. They were also friends.
She was a very unusual free thinker in our little pond called Sweden, he says.
She thought for herself and dared to challenge what was always expected in this opinion corridor.
He describes Oscarson as a very loyal friend, someone you could rely on and always could call. She was also a hardworking person with strong ideals, according to Suhonen.
It's as if our time also had needed her with the peace issue and no to nuclear weapons. Her voice fell silent all too early.
Suhonen describes that Oscarson had a kind of enlightenment thought that the truth will prevail. She believed in the right to test arguments and to discuss.
If we don't meet these forces that she absolutely didn't like, then they will win by default. That's how she saw it, that you can always discuss and in that way she is needed more than ever.
Like an Ardennes horse
Tobias Theorell, artistic director at the Royal Opera, says that the news of Stina Oscarson's passing is difficult to take in and that her uncomfortable and wise voice had been needed more than ever now.
We had contact as recently as ten days ago about a new project. The last thing we said was "see you soon again". It's terrible that the disease took her in the end, it feels unfair, she had a lot left to give.
He got to know Stina Oscarson when they worked together at Unga Klara in the late 1990s, where Stina was an assistant director to Suzanne Osten. Since then, their paths have crossed in many collaborations, not least at Folkoperan.
She could come up with ideas that were so spot on, like making an opera based on "Ålevangeliet", but above all she was such a good conversation partner.
She was the most persistent person I've met. We called her the Ardennes horse, damn how she worked. It wasn't any big gestures, she just worked on and had a real sense and nose for what's timely, which is fantastic for performing arts and theatre, says Tobias Theorell.
"A kind of antidote"
Even Linus Fellbom, newly appointed artistic director of Folkoperan, highlights the great void Stina Oscarson leaves behind in the public debate.
Especially in these terrible times of polarization that we're in now. She was a kind of antidote to that by being communicative without being judgmental, he says.
Her stubborn northern stoic warmth reminds Fellbom of Sara Lidman.
I've read her with great enthusiasm in Svenska Dagbladet. Not an entirely obvious choice of a clearly bourgeois newspaper. She was always problematizing in a giving way both her own and others' opinions.
Stina Oscarson passed away due to complications from anorexia, a disease she had spoken openly about. She was 49 years old.
