Stieg Larsson
Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson (/stiːɡ ˈlɑːrsən/, Swedish: [ˈkɑːɭ stiːɡ ˈæ̌ːɭand ˈlɑ̌ːʂɔn]; 15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish writer, journalist, and activist. He is best known for writing the Millennium trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, starting in 2005, after he died of a sudden heart attack. The trilogy was adapted as three motion pictures in Sweden, and one in the U.S. (for the first book only). The publisher commissioned David Lagercrantz to expand the trilogy into a longer series, which has six novels as of September 2019. For much of his life, Larsson lived and worked in Stockholm. His journalistic work covered socialist politics and he acted as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.
For other people with a similar name, see Stig Larsson.
Stieg Larsson
Karl Stig-Erland Larsson
15 August 1954
Skelleftehamn, Sweden
9 November 2004 (aged 50)
Stockholm, Sweden
Journalist, novelist
1990s–2004
Eva Gabrielsson (1974–2004; his death)
Knut Erland Fridolf Larsson (father), Gerd Dagny Vivianne Boström (mother)
He was the second-best-selling fiction author in the world for 2008, owing to the success of the English translation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, behind the Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini.[1] The third and final novel in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, became the bestselling book in the United States in 2010, according to Publishers Weekly.[2] By March 2015, his series had sold 80 million copies worldwide.[3]
Early life, family and education[edit]
Stieg Larsson was born in Skelleftehamn, Västerbottens län, Sweden, the son of Erland Larsson (born 1935) and his wife Vivianne, née Boström (1937–1991).[4] His father and maternal grandfather worked in the Rönnskärsverken smelting plant in Skelleftehamn. Suffering from arsenic poisoning, his father resigned from his job, and the family subsequently moved to Stockholm. However, because of their cramped living conditions, they chose to let one-year-old Larsson remain behind. Until the age of nine, Larsson lived with his grandparents in a small wooden house in the countryside, near the village of Bjursele in Norsjö Municipality, Västerbotten County.[5] He attended the village school and used cross-country skis to get to and from school during the long, snowy winters in northern Sweden, experiences that he remembered fondly.
In the book "There Are Things I Want You to Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me, Eva Gabrielsson describes this as Larsson's motivation for setting part of his first novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in northern Sweden, which Gabrielsson calls "godforsaken places at the back of beyond."
Larsson was not as fond of the urban environment in the city Umeå, where he resided with his parents after his grandfather, Severin Boström, died of a heart attack at age 50.
Larsson earned a secondary diploma in social sciences in 1972. He applied to the Joint Colleges of Journalism in Stockholm, but he failed the entrance examination. In 1974, Larsson was drafted into the Swedish Army under the conscription law. He spent 16 months in compulsory military service, training as a mortarman in an infantry unit in Kalmar County.
His mother Vivianne also died early, in 1991, from complications of breast cancer and an aneurysm.[6]
Writing[edit]
On his 12th birthday, Larsson's parents gave him a typewriter as a birthday gift.[5]
Larsson's first efforts at writing fiction were in the genre of science fiction. As an avid science fiction reader from an early age, he became active in Swedish science fiction fandom around 1971; he co-edited, with Rune Forsgren, his first fanzine, Sfären, in 1972; and he attended his first science fiction convention, SF•72, in Stockholm. Through the 1970s, Larsson published around 30 additional fanzine issues; after his move to Stockholm in 1971, he became active in the Scandinavian SF Society, of which he was a board member in 1978 and 1979, and chairman in 1980.
In his first fanzines, 1972–74, he published a handful of early short stories, while submitting others to other semiprofessional or amateur magazines. He was co-editor or editor of several science-fiction fanzines, including Sfären and FIJAGH!; in 1978–79, he was president of the largest Swedish science-fiction fan club, Skandinavisk Förening för Science Fiction. An account of this period in Larsson's life, along with detailed information on his fanzine writing and short stories, is included in the biographical essays written by Larsson's friend John-Henri Holmberg in The Tattooed Girl, by Holmberg with Dan Burstein and Arne De Keijzer, 2011.
In early June 2010, manuscripts for two such stories, as well as fanzines with one or two others, were noted in the National Library of Sweden (to which this material had been donated a few years earlier, mainly by the Alvar Appeltofft Memorial Foundation, which works to further science-fiction fandom in Sweden). This discovery of what was called "unknown" works by Larsson generated considerable publicity.[7]
Activism and journalism[edit]
While working as a photographer, Larsson became engaged in far-left political activism. He became a member of Kommunistiska Arbetareförbundet (Communist Workers' League),[8] edited the Swedish Trotskyist journal Fjärde internationalen, journal of the Swedish section of the Fourth International. He wrote regularly for the weekly Internationalen.[9]
Larsson spent parts of 1977 in Eritrea, training a squad of female Eritrean People's Liberation Front guerrillas in the use of mortars. He was forced to abandon that work after he contracted a kidney disease.[10] Upon his return to Sweden, he worked as a graphic designer at the largest Swedish news agency, Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, between 1977 and 1999.[9]
Larsson's political convictions, as well as his journalistic experiences, led him to found the Swedish Expo Foundation, similar to the British Searchlight Foundation, established to "counteract the growth of the extreme right and the white power culture in schools and among young people."[11] He also became the editor of the foundation's magazine, Expo, in 1995.
When he was not at his day job, he worked on independent research into right-wing extremism in Sweden. In 1991, his research resulted in his first book, Extremhögern (The Extreme Right). Larsson quickly became instrumental in documenting and exposing Swedish extreme right and racist organisations. He was an influential debater and lecturer on the subject, reportedly living for years under death threats from his political enemies. The political party Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna) was a major subject of his research.[11]
Name change[edit]
Larsson's first name was originally Stig, which is the standard spelling. In his early 20s, he changed it to avoid confusion with his friend Stig Larsson, who went on to become a well-known author well before Stieg did.[5][12] The pronunciation is the same regardless of spelling.
Death[edit]
Larsson died of a heart attack after climbing the stairs to work on 9 November 2004. He was 50. He is interred at the Högalid Church cemetery in the district of Södermalm in Stockholm.[13]
In May 2008, it was announced that a 1977 will, found soon after Larsson's death, declared his wish to leave his assets to the Umeå branch of the Communist Workers League (now the Socialist Party). As the will was unwitnessed, it was not valid under Swedish law, with the result that all of Larsson's estate, including future royalties from book sales, went to his father and brother.[14][15] His long-term partner Eva Gabrielsson,[16] who found the will, had no legal right to the inheritance, sparking controversy between his father and brother and her. Reportedly, the couple never married because, under Swedish law, couples entering into marriage were required to make their addresses (at the time) publicly available, so marrying would have created a security risk.[17]
An article in Vanity Fair discusses Gabrielsson's dispute with Larsson's relatives, which has also been well-covered in the Swedish press. She claims the author had little contact with his father and brother, and requests the rights to control his work so it may be presented in the way he would have wanted.[18] Larsson's story was featured on the 10 October 2010 segment of CBS News Sunday Morning.[19]
Biographies[edit]
Kurdo Baksi, Larsson's former colleague at Expo, published Min vän Stieg Larsson ("My Friend Stieg Larsson") in January 2010.[44]
Barry Forshaw's English language biography was published in April 2010.[45]
Larsson's widow Eva Gabrielsson released her memoir Millennium, Stieg & jag in 2011,[46] published in English the same year as "There Are Things I Want You to Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me.
In 2012, French comics artist Frédéric Rébéna drew a graphic biography of Larsson scripted by Guillaume Lebeau and entitled Stieg Larsson, avant Millenium, which was published by Denoël Graphic.[47]
In 2018 a study by Jan Stocklassa of Larsson's research into Olof Palme's assassination was released in Swedish,[48] and in English the following year, translated by Tara F. Chace, under the title The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin.[49]
Stieg Larsson prize[edit]
Since 2009 Larsson's family and Norstedts have instituted an annual award of 200,000 Swedish Krona (US$18,668 in 2022 terms) in memory of him. The prize is awarded to a person or organisation working in Stieg Larsson's spirit.
The recipient in 2015 was Chinese author Yang Jisheng for his notable work Tombstone which describes the consequences of The Three Years of Great Chinese Famine.[50]