_There Are Things I Want You to Know_ About Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson [58]
THE JOURNALISTS invariably ask the same questions, in the same order. The first one comes out like clockwork: Does everything shown in the trilogy (corruption, abuses of power, discrimination and violence against women, etc.) really exist in Sweden?
When I reply that most of the facts, events, and characters are real, the journalists are astounded. It’s strange that Sweden always seems like a model to many other nations, when here we have the same problems found everywhere else. These interviews show me that the trilogy has taken some of the luster off Sweden’s image as a progressive and egalitarian model for human rights.
The second question is rooted in the journalists’ astonishment that I am not considered Stieg’s widow after all those years spent together. How can our country allow such a situation to exist? A good question.
The Millennium Trilogy is today one of the most important Swedish exports, with—I repeat—more than forty million copies sold worldwide. But the trilogy is more than a few books: it’s a phenomenon that has had two major effects. The first is to have allowed a new image of Sweden to spread all over the globe. The second is that Stieg and the trilogy have become a kind of merchandise that can be endlessly commercialized.
THAT IS why I asked to be put in charge of Stieg’s literary estate. Every offer made by my lawyers since 2006 has reflected that wish. Every offer has left the Larssons free to choose the percentage of royalties assigned to me in payment for such work, which would thus allow them to remain the beneficiaries of most of the revenues. A long silence would always follow each of our offers … until their NO arrived. My lawyer, Sara Pers-Krause, summed things up for the Swedish media in November 2009: “We would like to emphasize that the important thing for us is the management of Stieg Larsson’s intellectual property and that we have, to this end, presented different requests since the spring of 2006 without ever receiving a single reply to any of our offers.”
AFTER FEBRUARY 2009 and all through the summer, the newspapers played up the negotiations between Yellow Bird and Sony’s production company in Hollywood over an American adaptation of The Millennium Trilogy. Familiar with the moral values of the United States and knowing that, unlike Sweden, twelve American states have laws guaranteeing the inheritance rights of common-law wives, I was curious to see what would happen. I was not disappointed.
ON OCTOBER 25, 2009, the Swedish evening paper Aftonbladet called me to discuss an article that would appear on the 26th in the daily Dagens Nyheter. Did I have any comment to make regarding the 2 million kronor (about $300,000) the Larssons would be paying me? I replied that I didn’t know anything about that, and neither did my lawyer. And nothing was published.
One week later, on November 2, the rival daily Svenska Dagbladet explained in its columns that the Larssons were now offering me 20 million kronor (almost $3 million). All I could say was that once again, my lawyer and I had been left out of that loop.
That same day, my lawyer called the Larssons’ new lawyer to state clearly that a newspaper article could not be considered a serious offer, and that we expected something more formal. This news made the rounds of the foreign media.
One month later, Variety reported in America that “the deal hasn’t closed yet; it’s been gestating for six months because of a rights dispute between Larsson’s parents and his longtime partner, Eva Gabrielsson.”
IT WAS at this point that discussion of the management of Stieg’s literary estate resumed among the Larssons, our lawyers, and me.
In the course of these negotiations, the Larssons offered me a seat on the board of their company, which administers the revenues generated by The Millennium Trilogy. This position would have given me access to contracts and financial reports without allowing me any control over how the trilogy and Stieg’s political writings were used. His intellectual property could be sold, rewritten, changed—and