70 pages • 2-hour read
The Girl Who Played With Fire
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Background
Series Context: The Millennium Series
The Millennium series is a series of crime novels written by Stieg Larsson before his death in 2004. The first trilogy of the series, consisting of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, was written by Larsson himself and published posthumously. Since Larsson’s death, David Lagercrantz has written a second trilogy in the series, which consists of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, and The Girl Who Lived Twice. Additionally, Karin Smirnoff is in the process of writing a third trilogy, with two titles announced so far: The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons and The Girl With Ice in Her Veins. Each novel focuses on the relationship between Lisbeth Salander, a hacker with a photographic memory, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist with a strong moral code. Larsson’s inspiration for the story has been questioned, but he initially claimed that the character of Lisbeth was inspired by a friend of his named Lisbeth, whom he witnessed being sexually assaulted by three other men.
The first book in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, introduces Blomkvist and Lisbeth separately. Blomkvist is working for the political magazine titled Millennium after having served time in prison for publishing false information about an industry titan named Hans Erik Wennerstrom. Meanwhile, Lisbeth has recently landed a job at Milton Security through her guardian, Holger Palmgren, and she quickly becomes the best researcher at the company. Both Blomkvist and Lisbeth end up working to solve the mystery of Harriet Vanger’s disappearance, which culminates when they catch and kill Martin Vanger, a serial rapist and murderer. The novel’s original title was Men Who Hate Women, and this working title provides clear indications of Larsson’s intentions for his characters. Just as the first novel outlines the protagonists’ attempts to bring Vanger to some form of justice, The Girl Who Played With Fire focuses on exposing and punishing men who commit violence against women, and this motivation plays a central role in both Blomkvist’s and Lisbeth’s motivations throughout the initial trilogy.
Authorial Context: Stieg Larsson
Stieg Larsson was a Swedish journalist who was best known for his work in fighting against right-wing extremism and white supremacy. Larsson worked for 20 years with Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, a Swedish news agency, and quickly became an expert on extremist issues. He also wrote for the British organization called Spotlight, which focused on anti-fascist efforts. This experience led him to found the Swedish Expo Foundation, which had the goal of stemming the progress of extreme, right-wing views among young people. Within the foundation, Larsson published a magazine called Expo in order to publish the foundation’s research. Because investigating fascist and white supremacist groups was inherently dangerous, Larsson became the frequent target of death threats and attacks. The Millennium trilogy was a side project for Larsson, though he began his career in writing science fiction short stories. Despite his posthumous literary success, his primary work during his lifetime was to research and expose the dangers of right-wing ideologies in Sweden.
According to Daniel Poohl, who became the head of the Swedish Expo Foundation in 2005, Millennium is a fantasy version of Expo, the magazine published by the Swedish Expo Foundation. Unlike Blomkvist, Larsson found that his real-life pursuits were hindered by the limits of his own business savvy and the need to avoid the grim realities of the violence surrounding his work. As a result, the fictional character of Blomkvist stands as an idealized version of Larsson himself, embodying the best elements of Larsson’s journalistic pursuits. Occasionally, Blomkvist reads as a self-insert fantasy, especially given his popularity with women and his improbable luck in finding the right people and information to help him take down the antagonists of the novels. Although Blomkvist and Millennium are both fictional, they nonetheless represent the kind of person and publication that Larsson wanted to be and create in the world.
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