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"There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me
By Eva Gabrielsson
Seven Stories Press
Copyright © 2011 Eva Gabrielsson
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-60980-363-6
Chapter One
In
the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the novel that opens
The Millennium Trilogy, Mikael Blomkvist discovers a photo taken during the Children's Day Parade in Hedeby, the oldest neighborhood in the small town of Hedestad, on the day Harriet Vanger disappeared. Seeking information about that day to help him understand what might have frightened the teenager away, he hunts for the tourist couple who photographed the parade forty years earlier. His research takes him into northern Sweden, first to Norsjö, then to Bjursele, in Västerbotten County. Why there? For most Swedes, those are godforsaken places at the back of beyond, but Stieg knew them well. It was there that he went as a baby in 1955 to live with his maternal grandparents. His father and mother, Erland Larsson and Vivianne Boström, were too young to bring him up properly, and they left to live 600 miles away in the south. In 1957 they moved again to Umeå (pronounced Umio), a small city 125 miles southeast of Norsjö.
Writing about Norsjö and Bjursele was Stieg's way of paying homage to the small community of people there who gave him the best moments of his youth. And a way of thanking them for the values they instilled in him.
* * *
Stieg lived with his grandparents in a small wooden house on the edge of a forest. Their home had a kitchen and one other room, without water, electricity, or an indoor toilet. This kind of house is typical of the Swedish countryside and its family farms, and in those days, when the next generation took over the farm, the old folks would "retire" to such a place. The walls of Stieg's grandparents' house were poorly insulated, and the joints between the planks were probably crammed with sawdust in the old style. The kitchen woodstove on which his grandmother cooked the meals was the only source of heat. In the winter, the temperature outside could drop to as low as -35 degrees Celsius, with—at most—thirty minutes of daylight, and Stieg used to ski cross-country to the village school in the moonlight. Prompted by his natural curiosity, he tirelessly explored the surrounding forests, lakes, and trails, hoping to meet other people and catch glimpses of animals, too. Life was tough where he lived, so it took plenty of ingenuity to survive, but such an environment breeds hardy individuals, self-reliant, resourceful, generous folks who can be counted on in a pinch. Like Stieg.
According to Stieg, his maternal grandfather, Severin, was an anti-Nazi communist who was imprisoned in an internment camp during World War II. After the war, such militants were not exactly welcomed back into society. Even at the time, people didn't want to talk about this period in Swedish history, and what happened then is still not common knowledge today. In 1955, Severin quit his job in a factory and left Skelleftehamn—where Stieg was born—to move into that small wooden house with his wife and their baby grandson. To support his little family, Severin repaired bikes and engines and did odd jobs on the local farms. Stieg adored going hunting and fishing with him. At the beginning of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist accepts an offer from Henrik Vanger, Harriet Vanger's uncle, to move into the guest house not far from Hedestad. It's the middle of winter, and he describes the "ice roses that formed on the inside of the windows": they were the same ones that used to fascinate Stieg in his grandparents' home, roses that grew from vapor in the family's breath and the water always boiling on the stove. He never forgot those magnificent visions, or the cold he could describe from personal experience. His childhood was a hard one, but it was full of joy and affection.
In black-and-white family snapshots, a little boy smiles between two grown-ups who've been having fun disguising themselves for the camera. Those two taught Stieg that nothing is impossible in this life. And that chasing after money is contemptible. His grandfather had an old Ford Anglia, the motor of which he'd probably repaired thanks to his skills as a mechanic and handyman, and this very car, with AC on its license plate for Västerbotten, is the one Mikael must track down during his search for Harriet Vanger. To write his trilogy, Stieg used a thousand such small details taken from life. From his life, from mine, and from ours.
Excerpt from "There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson (Seven Stories Press, June 2011).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from "There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson Copyright © 2011 by Eva Gabrielsson . Excerpted by permission of Seven Stories Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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