The Unexplained Death of Stieg Larsson: 8 Things to Know

If you are a lover of Stieg Larsson’s novels, you might also want to know about the unexplained death of Stieg Larsson. Over the years, most people had settle with some assumptions but there is a truth to most of them.

The nature of Stieg’s death created a lot of assumptions by his readers as there were so many incidents that led to his death.

However, the issue of not having proper detail about all that surrounding his death kept a lot of people in the dark.

1. Who is Steig Larsson?

Stieg Larsson was a great Swedish author recognized in all areas of the world for holding in high esteem the intimacy of the nocturnal shadow that is seen as a great literary talent.

Although the usual spelling of Larsson’s first name is Stig, he changed it in his early twenties to avoid being confused with his friend Stig Larsson, who went on to become a well-known author years before Stieg did.

The two friends were amateur photographers at the time, and because their names were so close, they wanted to avoid any confusion.

Although neither had he written a book then, they wanted to avoid any confusion since they were both in the same industry.

Later on, Stieg claimed that the two men had flipped a coin to decide who would change his name, but Stig Larsson disputes this.

In all that he did, he was seen to have been a reputable prodigy, an editorial and cinematographic phenomenon. He established a strong reputation as a great reporter, adamant feminist, chain smoker, and fan of crime fiction.

Of course, his unwavering battle against abuse and violence will always be remembered.

These attributes collectively elevated Larsson to legendary status. Hence, his devoted followers and respected status in the literary world are not surprising.

Furthermore, he posthumously released his most infamous work, Millennium, which also contributed significantly to the magical aura that his persona has taken on.

2. Birth and Childhood

Karl Stieg-Erland was said to be born on the 1st of August 1954, in Västerbotten, Sweden. It was a result of the marriage of a young, modest couple’s union, but they were later unable to support it because of their meager financial situation.

As a result, the author was raised by his grandparents in the rural community of Norsjö, which is located outside of Västerbotten.

Later, in 1962, he lost his grandfather, who served as his support system and mentor in the sphere of politics and human rights.

Larson was deeply affected despite being only 8 years old. He was compelled to go back to his biological parents as a result of this unexpected development, which made the boy uncomfortable because he was unable to adjust.

2.1. Adolescence

Stieg as a young first-year student enjoyed typing all day and all night on a noisy typewriter that he had received as a present in 1964.

The joy, though, didn’t last long. The author left home at the age of 16 due to his family’s misinterpretation of the artifact’s sound and incompatibility issues in the new setting.

2.2. Journalist and Social Activist

Stieg dabbled in politics in the XNUMXs. He completed his two years of military service for his country as required, and before he joined the Communist Workers’ League.

Despite never having a formal journalistic education, he managed to secure a job as a combat correspondent for his military training.

He worked as a journalist and graphic designer for Tidningarnas Telegrambyra between 1977 and 1999.

Also, he promoted the Expo Foundation in 1995, a body tasked with researching the height of racism in Sweden.

Moreover, he was appointed editor of the foundation’s magazine, where he displayed his familiarity with far-right organizations in Sweden.

2.3. His Unconditional Partner

He supported anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in Sweden together with his employment as a war correspondent.

From these objections, love discovered him with someone who was his constant companion for the time he was alive. Her name was Eva Gabrielsson, a stunning Swedish architect and political activist.

In order to avoid jeopardizing her life, Gabrielsson and Larsson decided not to formally get married. Fortunately, that made sense because Stieg was always in danger of being killed by right-leaning political movements.

As a result, they never got married or left behind any kind of official legal record. However, they remained housemates for 30 years, up to Larsson’s passing.

2.4. A Passion Fueled in His Free Time

The Swede found peace in two exciting genres for him: narrative and science fiction, due to his existence being so concealed from the public eye.

He was inspired to write at night and in the afternoons after finishing his other formal jobs by his love of literature. even during long days and nights.

2.5. His Works and Opinions

For some literary figures, his works have stirred up debate over the years. On one hand, Stieg Larsson is praised as a literary genius in a lot of favorable reviews.

He is indeed regarded as one of the XNUMXth century’s greatest writers in several literary circles.

3. Literary Background

The list below consists of everything you need to know about his literary background.

3.1. Literary Influences

In many of his interviews and written works, Larsson recognized that American and British crime/detective fiction writers had a considerable influence on his writing.

Lisbeth and Mallory, a character created by Carol O’Connell who debuted in 1994’s Mallory’s Oracle, are comparable.

He developed the practice of making it a habit in his own writing to pay tribute to some of his favorite writers by including their names inside the text and, on occasion, by having his characters read the works of those writers themselves.

Sara Paretsky, Agatha Christie, Val McDermid, Dorothy Sayers, and Enid Blyton were particularly notable authors.

One of his own nation’s most significant influences is the well-known children’s book Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren of Sweden.

Lisbeth Salander, a key recurrent character in the Millennium series created by Larsson, was revealed to be modeled on an adult Pippi Longstocking due to the way he chose to sketch her.

In addition, Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell and Lisbeth Salander by Larsson share parallels. Both are adult women with noteworthy skills, including fighting, who overcame difficult upbringings to do good while acting slightly outside the law.

Ronald Niedermann, a.k.a. “the blonde hulk,” is one of Larsson’s antagonists that resembles Simon Delicata, who is psychopathic, in the fourth Modesty Blaise novel A Taste for Murder.

3.2. Personal Life

According to Larsson’s own account, when he was 15 years old, he watched a girl being gang-raped, which gave him a lifelong aversion to violence and brutality against women.

The girl’s name was Lisbeth, and she shared the same trait as the young heroine of his books, a victim of rape that the author never forgave himself for failing to assist.

His writings’ themes of sexual aggression against women were motivated by this unnatural memory.

4. Trilogy Millennium

Stieg committed himself to writing more than 2,200 pages of his saga, Millennium, between the years 2001 and 2005.

The term was given to him by the fictional magazine that published his novels. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are the two major protagonists in this trio of Swedish-set crime thrillers.

The main character plays a 20-year-old, highly competent, antisocial hacker with a photographic memory, and her boyfriend, a journalist.

Together they are always embroiled in a chain of events that render them guilty of criminal accusations. They must therefore identify the actual offenders in order to refute the accusations.

4.1. Men Who Did Not Love Women (2005)

This is the first book in the trilogy, and it was released there a few months after the author’s passing.

This great tragic element was all that was needed to launch and quickly spread the novel’s fame across the globe. In her, an affluent family member named Harriet Vanger vanishes on a Swedish island.

The search for him has been ongoing for 36 years, and there are still many unanswered questions.

Henrik Vanger, the missing person’s uncle, solves the puzzle to learn what happened to the woman. He employs Mikael Blomkvist to undertake this, and Lisbeth Salander assists him in cracking the case.

4.2. The Girl Who Dreamed of a Match and a Can of Gasoline (2006)

The Girl Who Played with Fire in South America is the title of the sequel to Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander’s adventures.

Because Salander is under police investigation for murder, the author gives her much more significance in this second book.

Following the publication of a story about the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe, a journalist and his girlfriend are killed.

The aforementioned material was scheduled to appear in the magazine Millennium, but the crime prevents that from happening. However, Blomkvist must establish her innocence because Salander is the main suspect in this case based on the evidence.

4.3. The Queen in the Palace of the Air Currents (2007)

More than 200,000 copies of this third volume were sold in a single day. The story revolves around a fresh case for the two detectives.

Salander goes for the person who attempted to kill him and the government organizations that wiped out all evidence of the crime in an effort to exact revenge.

5. His Legacy

Larsson’s unexpected death was a pain to his readers, he left behind the drafts of three finished, unpublished novels in an undisclosed series.

As he got home from work in the evenings, he wrote them for his own enjoyment. He didn’t make an effort to get them published until just before he passed away.

The first book was released in Sweden in 2005 as Män som hatar kvinnor and was titled “Men who hate women”. The book was published in English.

It was recognized as the top Nordic crime novel in 2005 with the coveted “Glass Key” award. His second book, Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played with Fire in English), followed suit and was named the best Swedish crime fiction of 2006.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, also known as Luftslottet som sprängdes (“The air castle that was blown up”), is the third book in the Millennium trilogy. They release it in May 2010 in the United States.

A notebook computer, belonging to Larsson’s companion, Eva Gabrielsson, has almost three-quarters of a fourth book.

There are rumors that there are synopses or drafts of the fifth and sixth volumes in the series, which Larsson intended to eventually contain a total of 10 books.

The Millennium Trilogy was adapted for the big screen by the Swedish production company Yellow Bird in collaboration with the Danish production business Nordisk Film and TV Company.

The films were released in Scandinavia in 2009. Fans of the series have reacted differently to the news that Sony Pictures Entertainment has acquired the rights to produce its own high-profile English-language adaptation of the trilogy.

6. The Unexplained Death of Stieg Larsson

At the age of 50, Larsson passed away in Stockholm on November 9, 2004, after an unexpected heart attack.

Because of the death threats he got while serving as editor of Expo, there are still rumors floating around that his demise was somehow linked to it. His Swedish publisher, Eva Gedin, has always rejected these theories.

A supposed will from 1977 that had been discovered was revealed in May 2008. The will, which surfaced suspiciously shortly after Larsson’s passing, states that “Larsson” wishes to hand over his property to the Communist Workers League branch in Ume (now the Socialist Party).

The will was invalid under Swedish law since it was not witnessed, thus all of Larsson’s estate including any future earnings from book sales and movie sales went to his father and brother.

Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson’s longtime partner, discovered the will but has no legal claim to the inheritance, causing friction between her and his father and brother.

The lovers never wed because it would have been a security issue. According to Swedish legislation, couples getting married must disclose their current residences to the public.

The couple obtained legal anonymity in relation to their addresses, personal information, and identity numbers from public records.

This was done in an effort to make it more difficult for people working in the public sector to trace them as a result of his reporting on extremist groups and the death threats he had received.

This “identity cover” was essential to his employment as a journalist and would have been challenging to get around if they had legally wed or registered as a couple.

Gabrielsson’s conflict with Larsson’s family is the subject of a recent article in Vanity Fair, which has also received extensive coverage in the Swedish media.

She argues that the author had minimal touch with his father and sibling and asks for the authority to manage the presentation of his work as he would have desired. The CBS News Sunday Morning segment on October 10, 2010, also included a segment about Larsson.

7. Did Stieg Leave a Will?

Larsson did not leave a will, most likely to safeguard Gabrielsson, just as he did not wed her. Gabrielsson was able to avoid the same dangers that Stieg faced since there was no paper trail tying the pair together legally or financially.

The Larsson family received all of the Millennium trilogy’s earnings. It would have been beyond Stieg’s wildest dreams, in Gabrielsson’s words, “to know that someone other than me was handling the rights to his writings and to know that the money we planned to invest is gone.”

Before traveling to Africa in 1977, Larsson reportedly did leave behind a sealed envelope that read: “holds my will. Do not open until I pass away.”

The Socialist Party of Umea, Sweden, is said to be the sole beneficiary of the will. Law, however, does not apply because it was not seen.

7.1. Larsson’s Accolades

1. In 2006, he got the Glass Key award, know as Män som hatar kvinnor

2. He won the best Swedish Crime Novel Awardin 2006, Flickan som lekte med elden

3. Stieg won the Glass Key award in 2008, Luftslottet som sprängdes.

4. In 2008, the same year he won the Glass Key Award, he also won ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for International Author of the Year in the UK, for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

5. Larsson also won the Exclusive Books Boeke Prize, South Africa, in 2008 for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

6. He won Galaxy British Book Awards, Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, 2009, UK, for the same book.

7. He won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, for the same novel.

8. He wrapped his award-winning with the General Council of the Judiciary award, Spain, for his quota to the fight against domestic violence.

8. Bibliography

This consists of both fiction and non-fiction.

8.1. Non-fiction

• Anna-Lena Lodenius and Stieg Larsson: Extremhögern, Stockholm, 1991
• Sverigedemokraterna: det nationella rörelsen, Stockholm, 2001, by Stieg Larsson and Mikael Ekman
• Debatten om hedersmord: feminism eller rasism, Stockholm, 2004. Stieg Larsson, Cecilia Englund
• Sverigedemokraterna frn insidan: Richard Slätt, Maria Blomquist, Stieg Larsson, and David Lagerlöf m.fl., 2004

8.2. Fiction

This consists of the millennium and periodicals

8.2.1. The Millennium series:

• “Men Who Hate Women.” 2005. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was translated into English by Reg Keeland on September 16, 2008, in the US
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006), Flickan som lekte med elden The Girl Who Played with Fire was translated into English by Reg Keeland in January 2009. 
• The Air Castle That Was Blown Up (Luftslottet som sprängdes), 2007. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, translated into English by Reg Keeland, October 2009. Released in the US in May 2010.

8.2.2. Periodicals

• 1972 and subsequent issues of Sfären, FIJAGH!, and other science fiction fanzines
• Expo Svartvitt, 1999–2002
• Expo, 2002–2004

9. In the End

He passed away without realizing how well-known his name would become throughout the world.

He wrote his crusading articles condemning the heinous activities of the neo-Nazis in his native Sweden, a campaign to which he had dedicated his life, but rather for what he had been doing in his spare time.

He conducted an independent study on right-wing extremism in Sweden during his free time. Right-wing extremism (“Extremhögern”), the product of his research, was published as his debut book in 1991.

Larsson would swiftly play a key role in the documentation and eventual exposing of racist and extreme right organizations in Sweden.

He was a well-known debater and lecturer on the issue and reputedly endured years of threats to his life from his political rivals.

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