8 Fascinating Facts About ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’

In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist retreats to the Swedish countryside on a peculiar assignment: to uncover the truth about the decades-old disappearance of a young girl. As sinister details emerge, he seeks help from an unlikely source—Lisbeth Salander, a countercultural, intensely private hacker with a convenient disregard for playing by the rules.

The novel, written by Stieg Larsson, kicked off a franchise that now spans multiple books and movies (not to mention that it helped popularize putting girl in titles). Here are some fascinating facts about how it came to be.

1. The author resembles his protagonist in one big way.
2. The books were published posthumously.
3. Larsson’s partner was involved in his writing process.
4. Larsson drew inspiration from real-life murders.
5. The book’s English title is nothing like its Swedish one.
6. Lisbeth Salander’s dragon tattoo is supposed to be massive.
7. The English translator opted to use a pseudonym.
8. An unfinished fourth book exists.

The author resembles his protagonist in one big way.

Stieg Larsson, like Mikael Blomkvist, was a journalist who ran a leftist publication. Larsson’s was Expo, a magazine he founded in 1995 to expose Sweden’s rising tide of right-wing extremism. Though Expo got plenty of attention, it didn’t turn a huge profit, so in 2002 Larsson decided to try his hand at fiction—hoping a commercial success would help fund his journalism.

The books were published posthumously.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its two sequels—The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, collectively known as the Millennium trilogy or Millennium series—did achieve international acclaim. But Larsson didn’t live long enough to reap the benefits: In 2004, he died of a heart attack at age 50. The first book in the trilogy was published the following year.

Larsson’s partner was involved in his writing process.

The fact that Larsson went from never having published a novel to churning out three future best sellers in a two-year span drew skepticism from colleagues and strangers alike. Anders Hellberg, a journalist who had edited some of Larsson’s earlier work—which he described to The New York Times as “impossible”—actually suggested that Larsson hadn’t written the Millennium series at all, and others have theorized that his longtime partner Eva Gabrielsson was steering the ship.

Gabrielsson, also a writer, maintains that Larsson himself penned the unforgettable escapades of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, but she has admitted to participating in the process. “The actual writing, the craftsmanship, was Stieg’s,” she told The Guardian in 2011. “But the content is a different matter. There are a lot of my thoughts, ideas, and work in there.” While Larsson was writing the series, Gabrielsson was busy with her own book on Swedish architect Per Olof Hallman, and her research also helped Larsson choose where certain scenes would take place. 

Larsson drew inspiration from real-life murders.

According to Gabrielsson’s memoir, “Every violent act in The Millennium Trilogy was inspired by real murders described in police reports. In Sweden, once sentence is pronounced, the files enter the public domain and may be consulted.” She cited three Swedish murders that directly influenced the books: Melissa Nordell, murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2001; Fadime Sahindal, murdered by her father in 2002; and Catrine da Costa, a sex worker whose partial remains were discovered in two trash bags in 1984. The defendants charged with her murder weren’t convicted, and the statute of limitations has expired.

The book’s English title is nothing like its Swedish one.

When discussing the English title of Larsson’s first novel, a more apt expression than lost in translation might be intentionally changed to something completely different in translation. It was released in Sweden in 2005 under its original name: Män som hatar kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women. But British booksellers recommended an overhaul after publisher Christopher MacLehose acquired the English-language rights, so he came up with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. According to Sonny Mehta, who published Larsson’s work in the U.S., the shift was partially motivated by worry that prospective readers might mistake Men Who Hate Women for a self-help book. And as he explained in a 2010 BookPage interview, the new title also took the focus off the novel’s criminally misogynistic villains and placed it instead on the indomitable heroine, Lisbeth Salander.

The second novel’s Swedish title, Flickan som lekte med elden, matches its English one—The Girl Who Played With Fire—but English-language publishers again diverged from their Swedish counterparts for the third and final work in the Millennium trilogy. Luftslottet som sprängdes roughly translates to “the air castle that blew up,” which became The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

Lisbeth Salander’s dragon tattoo is supposed to be massive.

Salander isn’t exactly known for subtle gestures, so it makes sense that her fearsome dragon tattoo takes up a considerable portion of her back—in the Swedish version, that is. In The Tattooed Girl: The Enigma of Stieg Larsson and the Secrets Behind the Most Compelling Thrillers of Our Time, authors Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer, and John-Henri Holmberg explain that Larsson describes the tattoo as “stretching across her back, from her right shoulder blade down to her buttock” in the first novel, and mentions that the dragon’s tail extends all the way to her thigh in the sequel. The English versions, on the other hand, place a pint-sized dragon “on her shoulder blade.”

The English translator opted to use a pseudonym.

Slight translational discrepancies aren’t uncommon in literature, but Larsson’s work may contain more than the average novel. Steven T. Murray originally translated the three books as a rush job for English-speaking movie producers, and there wasn’t time for him to partake in much of the editing process once MacLehose had committed to publishing them for readers. For this reason, Murray opted to use the alias “Reg Keeland” for his translator byline.

An unfinished fourth book exists.

Larsson penned part of a fourth novel. In 2010, Holmberg—a personal friend of Larsson’s—told the Associated Press that the unfinished manuscript amounted to 320 pages, and he also revealed details that Larsson had emailed him weeks before his death. “The plot is set 120 kilometers north of Sachs Harbour, at Banks Island in the month of September,” Larsson wrote. “Did you know that 134 people live in Sachs Harbour, whose only contact with the world is a postal plane twice a week when the weather permits?” 

But Gabrielsson, who has the manuscript on Larsson’s laptop (or she did as of 2010), claimed in 2011 that it only comprised about 200 pages. According to her, they didn’t really “hang together” and “it might be quite a difficult task” to complete the book, given that Larsson didn’t write from an outline or keep notes. Still, she thought it was “feasible” and explained that she hadn’t tried because Larsson’s estate wouldn’t grant her the rights to do so.

The series has since moved on without her involvement. David Lagercrantz continued Salander’s story through three novels: The Girl in the Spider’s Web (the basis for a 2018 film starring Claire Foy), The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, and The Girl Who Lived Twice. Karin Smirnoff then took over with The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons, whose English-language translation hit shelves in 2023.

Read More About Books: