_There Are Things I Want You to Know_ About Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson [60]
RIGHT BEFORE the site went online, Erland and Joakim Larsson donated 4 million kronor (a little less than $600,000) to Expo, on top of a previous gift of 1 million kronor (not quite $150,000). This news prompted the Norwegians to contact Expo and Searchlight, the two biggest antifascist magazines for which Stieg had written, to ask them to write about the site and publicize a link to it. The British magazine immediately allocated a large space on its website to this end. Expo, however, replied that my conflict with the Larssons was unfortunate, but that they couldn’t take sides in a private matter. The same point was raised by Norstedts, which declined to help.
ON MAY 25, 2009, Norstedts and the Larssons together awarded their first “Stieg Larsson Prize” of 200,000 kronor, almost $30,000, in memory of Stieg’s battles against injustice.
It was presented to Expo.
The Fourth Volume
AS I’VE already related, my sister Britt went with Erland to Expo‘s office on the morning after Stieg’s death, and I asked her to take my partner’s backpack along with her. It contained his agenda, with booked lectures, meetings and deadlines, the detailed outline for the next issue, and the Expo laptop. This computer thus belongs to the magazine, but it also contains Stieg’s articles, his correspondence with Searchlight, his research, the names of his informants, etc. For this reason, the laptop is protected by the Swedish Constitution’s Freedom of the Press Act, which says that a journalist’s sources must be kept confidential. This computer, unprotected by any secret password, remained in the Expo office for more than six months. At the time, someone suggested that it be put in the office safe, but the safe was locked and only Stieg knew the combination!
The laptop contains the fourth volume of the Millennium saga … perhaps.
This text is a little more than two hundred pages long, because when we went on vacation that last summer, Stieg had already written more than a hundred and sixty pages. Between going over the first volume a few times in the final editing, finishing the third one, and his work at Expo, Stieg probably didn’t have time in the weeks before his death to add more than fifty pages to the fourth volume.
I have no intention of summarizing here the plot of the fourth novel. I would like to say, however, that in this book Lisbeth Salander gradually breaks free of all of her ghosts and enemies. Every time she manages to take revenge on someone who has harmed her, physically or psychologically, she has the tattoo symbolizing that person removed. Lisbeth’s piercings are her way of following the fashion of others her age, but those tattoos are her war paint. To some extent, the young woman behaves like a native in an urban jungle, acting like an animal, relying on instinct, of course, but always on the alert as well for what may lie ahead, sniffing out danger. Like Lisbeth, I trust my instincts when I encounter new people and situations. As Stieg well knew.
In the space of two years, Stieg wrote two thousand pages of the trilogy, almost without notes or research (except for small details). How did he do it? Simple: the basic material for these books is our personal lives and our thirty-two years together. The trilogy is the fruit of Stieg’s experience, but of mine as well. Rooted in Stieg’s childhood, but in mine, too. Rooted in our battles, our commitments, our trips, our passions, our fears…. These books are the jigsaw puzzle of our lives. That’s why I cannot tell exactly what part of The Millennium Trilogy comes from Stieg and what comes from me. What I can say is that if anyone ever decided to take up the challenge to continue the adventure, each book would require years of work.
The vicissitudes of life arranged for Stieg, not me, to bring all of those things together to create literature. Ironically, some people insist that