Stieg Larssoon's live-in companion of thirty-two years, Eva Gabrielson spoke with Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show about her claim to some of the fortune amassed from his Milennium Trilogy after his death in 2004. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first novel of the trilogy, introduced readers to Lisbeth Salander, the girl to which the title refers, and Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who eventually hires Salander to help him solve a decades-old murder. To date, Gabrileson has not received a dime of the over $40,000,000 profit from book sales and movie deals.
Gabrielson is visiting the US to promote her book There Are Things I Want You to Know about Stieg Larsson and Me. She writes in a straightforward tone and terse, unadorned style, according to NY Times writer Charles McGrath. He also asserts that conspiracy theorists who didn't believe that Larsson had the talent to pen the Milennium Trilogy will find nothing in her book to substantiate that notion. McGrath explains, in some detail, a part of her book that discusses a Viking curse she called forth "on New Year’s Eve 2004 against all her and Larsson’s enemies: the false friends, the cowards 'who let Stieg fight your battles while you raked in the salaries of your cushy jobs,' the wearers of 'suits, ties and wingtips,' ' the evil ones 'who plotted, spied and stirred up prejudice'.” Rather than sacrifice a live horse as custom dictates, Eva Gabrielsson broke a ceramic horse sculpture in two and tossed it into Stockholm’s Lake Malaren. She fervently believes it worked.
Savannah Guthrie asked Ms. Gabrielson why she and Larsson had never married. She responded that he was involved in writing against the extreme right-wing, so, for security reasons, everything was placed in her name to protect him from people who might want to harm him. Larsson's father and brother inherited his estate, although he was estranged from them for years. Sweden has no provision for common law marriage, and Gabrielson has been locked in a battle with his relatives over the money since his death. How can a country with such a liberal lifestyle have such antiquated laws when it comes ot marriage? The time has come for Sweden to enter the 21st Century and recognize the alternative ways of living today.
Ms. Gabrielson reveals that about two hundred pages of a fourth novel reside on his computer and has never been printed. She expresses doubts that a ghost writer could finish the novel, because Larsson's other novels contained about six hundres pages each. She contends that another writer would find it difficult to take over the characters and plot. I read the Millenium Trilogy and was immediately hooked, to the point I read until bleary-eyed, and millions of people around the world have had the same reaction. It only seems just that a woman who devoted thirty-two years to a relationship with someone she refers to as her "soul mate" should receive some benefit from his posthumous success. It's clear that the US is not the only society where some are driven by greed.
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