--- title: The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo description: The stranger-than-fiction saga of Stieg Larsson's literary estate canonical: https://time.com/archive/6597062/the-legacy-of-the-dragon-tattoo/ author: Lev Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2010-05-24T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T06:30:22.357Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo og:description: The stranger-than-fiction saga of Stieg Larsson's literary estate og:url: https://time.com/archive/6597062/the-legacy-of-the-dragon-tattoo/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo twitter:description: The stranger-than-fiction saga of Stieg Larsson's literary estate twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo > Sponsored content. 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No monthly maintenance fees. No overdraft fees, no hidden fine print, no hoops for better rates. * 24/7 human support from real humans, not bots. ### FAQ #### Who is Ally Bank? Ally Bank is an online-only bank launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in the financial services industry, built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. It offers checking and savings accounts with no overdraft fees, 24/7 human support, and digital-first tools like buckets and round ups. Deposits are FDIC-insured up to the maximum amount allowed by law. #### Is Ally good for everyday banking? Ally is built for everyday banking, spending, and saving. Its Spending Account is a checking account that includes early direct deposit (paychecks up to 2 days early), access to 75,000+ fee-free ATMs nationwide, the ability to add cash for free at participating locations nationwide, and no overdraft fees. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Lev Grossman](https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/) May 24, 2010 4:00 AM UTC by [Lev Grossman](https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/) May 24, 2010 4:00 AM UTC On Nov. 9, 2004, Stieg Larsson arrived at the Stockholm offices of _Expo_, the antifascist magazine he founded. The elevator was broken, so he had to climb seven flights of stairs instead. When he reached the top he collapsed. He was having a massive heart attack. He died before he reached the hospital. It was a sudden, shocking death — but not a completely surprising one. Larsson was only 50, but he was a 20-Marlboro-Lights-a-day smoker with a legendary junk-food habit, and his family had a history of heart problems. The truly surprising part is what happened next. Larsson had spent most of his life documenting the activities of fascist groups in Sweden, but at the time of his death he’d also written three unpublished crime novels, now known as the _Millennium_ trilogy: [_The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_](http://techland.com/2009/02/20/cold-noir/)_,_ [_The Girl Who Played with Fire_](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898966%5F1898961%5F1898949,00.html) and _The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest_. They went on to become best sellers, and then international best sellers, and then a global phenomenon that has generated a fortune in royalties. [(See the top 10 fiction books of 2009.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1943868,00.html) But whose fortune? With _Hornet’s Nest_ set to be released in the U.S. on May 25, Larsson’s legacy remains the focus of a protracted legal dispute between his family and his companion of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson. It’s become a public soap opera in Sweden, with all the elements of a literary thriller: a star-crossed romance, a missing will, a house divided and a mysterious manuscript. It’s the sort of story Larsson might have written — except for the ending, which is likely to be something out of Tolstoy, maybe, or Chekhov: sadder and less satisfying. **The Boy Who Died Too Soon** Larsson was born in 1954\. His father and mother were shopworkers in Umea, a small city in northern Sweden. In 1972, when he was 18, Larsson went to a demonstration against the Vietnam War, where he met Gabrielsson, a fellow protester, also 18\. Two years later they moved in together, and in 1977 they left Umea for Stockholm. Larsson signed on as a reporter with a news agency, and Gabrielsson began studying the history of architecture. They were still together 32 years later when he died. But they never married. Larsson proposed in 1983, but shortly after their engagement he was hired as the Swedish correspondent for _Searchlight_, a British antiracist, antifascist magazine. From that point on he was forced to keep a low profile. Fascism is a live issue in Sweden, and fascist groups have been known to attack reporters who investigate them. But informational transparency is a point of national pride there too, and married couples must make their addresses public. To stay under the radar, the couple put off their wedding indefinitely. His résumé notwithstanding, Larsson wasn’t a humorless, steel-jawed crusader. By all accounts he was a man of large and joyful appetites who loved to drink and smoke and, above all, to talk. “He wasn’t at all driven,” says Graeme Atkinson, _Searchlight_‘s European editor, who knew Larsson for 20 years. “He was easygoing. His curiosity about things was just so immense.” [(See the best books of the decade.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1949837%5F1948739,00.html) In 2002, Larsson and Gabrielsson took a vacation on an island in the Stockholm archipelago. “Stieg had nothing to do,” Gabrielsson told the Los Angeles _Times_ in late 2009\. “That’s when he picked up a short story he had written about an old man selling flowers who gets murdered. And that became the first chapter of _Millennium_.” Over the next two years he wrote 2,000 pages, with Gabrielsson kibitzing and editing. Ultimately he hoped to run the series to 10 novels in all. A Swedish publisher offered him a three-book deal. Larsson delivered the manuscripts in a plastic shopping bag. Six months later, he was dead. **Life Imitates Art** The first hint of trouble arrived in early 2005, in the form of a big brown envelope from the Swedish government. It informed Gabrielsson that Larsson’s entire estate, including half of their apartment and the rights to his books, had gone to Larsson’s father Erland and younger brother Joakim. She had inherited nothing. The government’s position was simple. Larsson and Gabrielsson never married, and Sweden has no common-law marriage. Larsson had asked his publisher to help him draw up a will, but it was never executed. When Gabrielsson asked the Larssons for the rights to Stieg’s novels, they declined — although they did offer her a share in them. Gabrielsson refused to discuss it: it was all or nothing. Standoff. [See a brief history of posthumous literature.](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1883896,00.html) [See the top 10 nonfiction books of 2009.](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1943966,00.html) The irony here, or one of the ironies, is that embattled, disenfranchised women are Larsson’s fictional specialty. His books have two heroes. One is Mikael Blomkvist, a Larssonesque journalist, middle-aged and unmarried, like Tintin grown up and gone to seed. The other hero, and the series’ salvation, is Lisbeth Salander, a young computer genius whose abusive childhood has left her a misanthropic nihilist. Larsson’s writing has a slightly robotic affectlessness — conveyed in part by his, or his translator’s, apparent lack of interest in contractions — but Salander burns through the Nordic languor with her electric rage, her incandescent cleverness, her principled refusal of all emotional ties and her determination to think the worst of everybody. Much of the pleasure of reading Larsson lies in getting righteously angry on Salander’s behalf. [(See the 100 best books of all time.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1951793,00.html) Joakim and Erland Larsson hasten to point out that Gabrielsson wasn’t cut off completely, but under the circumstances their generosity doesn’t play particularly sympathetically. “When Stieg died, he had a little bit of money” — about $20,000, says Joakim. “We gave Eva that money. If you take away the books, Eva got more money when Stieg died than if they were married.” It isn’t much when you look at the outlandish scale of the books’ success. They’ve sold 3.5 million copies in Sweden alone, all the more impressive when you consider that Sweden has only about 9 million people. They were the three top-selling novels in Germany last year. They’ve outsold _Harry Potter_ in France. The first two have sold 4 million copies in the U.S. The Swedish film of _The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_ was the most successful release in Europe last year, and a Hollywood remake is in the works, with the role of Blomkvist reportedly offered to Brad Pitt. The Larssons say Stieg’s estate is worth $15 million, although that is a very low estimate based on the many millions of books sold, not to mention the [movie rights](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1973433,00.html). [(See the 100 best movies of all time.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,1953094,00.html) It’s not all about money. Each side has accused the other of being incompetent in managing Larsson’s legacy, and the extent of Gabrielsson’s contributions to the books has also been debated. But the most hotly contested point is the nature of Larsson’s relationship with his family. Gabrielsson’s tale is that of a man all but estranged from his brother and father, who as soon as he was dead swooped down to loot the corpse. “I had no idea they had it in them to behave like this when money and power came along,” Gabrielsson told the _Daily Mail_ in January. “Stieg really disliked his father … They blew the last 50 years and they still don’t get it.” But the Larssons tell a very different story. “I loved him very much,” says Joakim. “He was a sort of hero for me. My father would speak to him once or twice a week on the phone.” Gabrielsson has little legal ammunition in this fight. Her only points of leverage are public opinion — a fan has set up a website, [SupportEva.com](http://supporteva.com) to raise money for her — and Larsson’s old laptop, which is still in her possession. On its hard drive are 200 pages of an unfinished fourth _Millennium_ novel, which the Larssons, and most of the rest of the literate world, would love to get their hands on. In a bizarre negotiating gambit, the Larssons offered to trade her their half of the apartment for the manuscript. Gabrielsson declined. [(See the top 10 news stories of 2009.)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379%5F1944421,00.html) The Larssons have made concessions. Two years ago they caved on the apartment, where Gabrielsson still lives, and last November they offered her $2.6 million to settle the matter once and for all. “I don’t have a dispute with her,” Joakim says. “She does with us. We want her to have a good life. If we can help her with that, then we will do it.” Gabrielsson declined again, but the conversation isn’t over. “We’ve met a few times and discussed some issues,” says Sara Pers-Krause, Gabrielsson’s lawyer. “We will probably go on doing that as long as we think it’s worthwhile.” Fans hungry for the missing _Millennium_ novels have seized on the legal drama surrounding them as a substitute. But it’s a poor one: if Larsson were writing the story, Gabrielsson would emerge from the fray in a satisfying blaze of vindication, re-enfranchised by some yet undreamt-of legal wrinkle or computer hackery. But the reality will probably be slower and messier, and it’s unlikely to leave anybody completely satisfied. It’s a strange afterlife for a man who never cared much about money. “If he saw his pictures around the world’s airports and underground stations,” says Atkinson, “he would have given his characteristic response: a rather wry and slightly mischievous smile.” —_Reported by Carla Power / London_ [See the best pictures of 2009.](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1946595,00.html) [See 25 people who mattered in 2009.](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375%5F1946333,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6597062/the-legacy-of-the-dragon-tattoo/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6597062/the-legacy-of-the-dragon-tattoo/"},"headline":"The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo","datePublished":"2010-05-24T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T06:30:22.357Z","description":"The stranger-than-fiction saga of Stieg Larsson's literary estate","url":"https://time.com/archive/6597062/the-legacy-of-the-dragon-tattoo/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lev Grossman","url":"https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6597062/the-legacy-of-the-dragon-tattoo/","name":"The Legacy of the Dragon Tattoo"}}]}] ```