_There Are Things I Want You to Know_ About Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson [25]
I had begun writing my book in 1997 but was obliged to set it aside when the Swedish government hired me to join a study on the feasibility of constructing affordable quality housing. In 2002, however, I decided to become a part-time consultant so that I could concentrate on my research, which involved spending a great deal of time studying documents in libraries, archives, and stores specializing in old books. Every evening, when Stieg came home and dumped his backpack in the hall, he would always call out, “Hey there! Anybody home?” Then he would head straight for the settee where I sat working and ask his other eternal questions: “What did you find out today? Is there any coffee?” He’d settle in next to me, asking lots of questions and listening closely to my replies.
Since Stieg didn’t have time to read each new version of my book, I discussed the text with him regularly. On Saturdays I’d take him on lengthy walks through the “Hallman zones” I was writing about. As a research shortcut for the trilogy (and to give a little nod to my work), he’d asked me if he could use the places I was showing him so that his characters could live in neighborhoods that matched their personalities. That’s why Dag Svensson and Mia Bergman—an investigative reporter and a grad student—live in the garden village Enskede, at 8B Bjorneborgsvagen Street, while Cortez, a reporter for Millennium, is on bohemian Alhelgonagatan, in Helgalunden, a neighborhood on Sodermalm. And when the trilogy opens, Lisbeth Salander’s place is on working-class Lundagatan.
However, Stieg wanted Mikael Blomkvist’s apartment to be in the oldest part of Sodermalm, not in those Hallman zones. We investigated numerous addresses before finding the right one. Bellmansgatan offered several possibilities, one of which was the Laurinska building, at Nos. 4-6. Since its construction in 1891, many artists had lived in this large red-brick apartment house with its spectacular view over the Riddarfjarden, a bay of Lake Malaren in central Stockholm, but it was too luxurious for Mikael, who could not have afforded to buy anything there. We next seriously considered what looked to us like the ideal apartment building, with a small view of the bay, but it didn’t have enough exits to support the moment in the trilogy when three different groups can all keep Blomkvist under surveillance at the same time. Stieg was disappointed about that, but I told him it wasn’t important: “We’ll put an imaginary door there”—I pointed to the place—”and give the building a fictitious number. That way, the address will fit the plot.”
Stieg’s face lit up. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do!” But somehow that made-up number disappeared in the published version of the surveillance episode, which takes place in the third volume—and Stieg never had time to review any proofs except those for the first book.
At the beginning of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist tells how he renovated his apartment himself and hid the worst patches of wall behind two watercolors by Emanuel Bernstone. I’ve always been very fond of that artist’s oeuvre, and at a time when he was completely unknown I bought one of his works, a picture of a red-tailed bird, with my small inheritance from my grandmother. And I was able to buy the second painting, a seagull, with the money left to me by my mother. Both watercolors are strong yet delicate “portraits” of shorebirds, and they have a great serenity. They still hang in the home I shared with Stieg.
For my book on Hallman, I had a lengthy interview with his daughter, who was ninety-six years old at the time. She told me that her father had often gone sailing with Anders Zorn, one of Sweden’s foremost painters,