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I thought back over all those years of frustration that had wounded the man of my life, years during which some people had refused to recognize his abilities, his immense store of knowledge, and his worth. Time after time I’d watched his disappointment at not having been accepted as a journalist at TT, his pain over so many hopes that were dashed and all those promises he’d believed in only to see them broken in the end. I relived his anguish, discouragement, and his constant fear, after he’d left TT, that Expo would go under in spite of all his efforts every month to find funding for it. I remembered him coming home so late in the evenings, worn out, sleeping more and more badly, fitfully. I recalled a terrible period when too much stress brought on a painful, chronic gum inflammation, for which a doctor had prescribed very strong medications. Feeling pressured from all directions, Stieg talked to me about his problems, of course, seeking advice, but he had to make all of his own decisions. Overwhelmed by this horrible flood of black memories, I was in despair. I could not cope with it.

Then, sensing that I might find a way to grapple with my depression, I turned to mythology for a violent, raw, unflinching way to express all this, something that would measure up to my suffering. We had many books on the subject, and I found what I was looking for in the Elder Edda—a collection of poems in Old Norse, the ancestor of the modern Scandinavian languages—and in particular in the Havamal (Sayings of the High One or The Words of the Most-High). I realized that my catharsis would pass through the writing of a nid (pronounced nee), a traditional curse, which I would recite during a magic ceremony.

I set the date: December 31.

In Scandinavian mythology, the nid, written in Skaldic poetry (perhaps the most complex verse form ever created in the West), is a kind of taunting curse hurled at one’s enemies. It was read or carved in the runic alphabet on a stake of hazelwood known as “the staff of infamy,” which was driven into the ground. A horse was sacrificed and its head stuck on top of the stake, turned toward the poet’s mortal enemy. Although its origins are lost to time, this rite crops up even until about the tenth century in the Icelandic sagas. And in the 1980s, Icelanders are said to have used it against the occupants of the NATO military base at the Keflavik International Airport, built by the United States during World War II. Iceland joined NATO in 1949, and Americans returned there in force in 1951. They must have been nonplussed to wake up one morning and find the grinning, blood-streaked head of a horse stuck on a stake, its mane blowing in the wind! They didn’t leave until 2006, but if the ceremony really did take place, I’m sure it did some good—at least for those who carried it out.

On December 31, 2004, Britt and I took a walk along the Montelius cliff path, toward Slussen (the Lock), which connects Gamla Stan with Sodermalm. Before returning to the apartment on the small island of Reimersholm, just west of Sodermalm, we bought wine and a leg of lamb. For more than a hundred years, a distillery on Reimersholm has produced spirits to make aquavit, the most popular Swedish drink. Aquavit is essentially vodka flavored with spices and berries, and today “Reimersholm” has become the generic name for the eighteen or so varieties of aquavit. When Mikael Blomqvist drinks Reimersholm aquavit in the trilogy, Stieg is of course toasting “our” little island.

While the garlic-and-cinnamon-studded leg of lamb was cooking, I went off alone to finish my nid. I was nervous, because I needed to get it done in time—but I wanted it to be perfect, too. To help me out, Britt had called one of her friends, an Icelandic scholar, to ask her if there were any precise rules for the writing of a nid. After a moment of silence at the other end of the phone, her friend had asked, “You really mean nid, in the sense of an insulting