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Authors: Eva Gabrielsson
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why women all over the world are murdered, mutilated, ‘circumcised,’ mistreated, and forced to submit to ritual behaviors by men. Neither does it explain why men in our patriarchal societies oppress women.” And he adds, “
Systematic violence
against women—because this violence is indeed systematic—would be the description used if such violence were directed against union members, Jews, or handicapped persons.” Stieg was quite gratified when the other eight contributors to the anthology, six of them women, wholeheartedly agreed with him.
The third murder was that of Catrine Da Costa, parts of whose dismembered body were found in two plastic bags. Stieg had read a fascinating book about that crime. The author, Hanna Olsson, contacted me recently after reading Stieg’s essay on honor crimes to tell me that she would have loved to work with him. 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.
What more beautiful homage could Stieg pay to women than to make them heroines in a feminist crime novel? And to show them as he saw them: brave, free, strong enough to change their world and refuse to be victims. As for the murderers, Stieg’s indictment of them in the trilogy is encoded in verses from the Bible.
At the Heart of the Bible
THE REMARKABLE atmosphere Stieg created in
The Millennium Trilogy
, with its characteristic moral rigor and wealth of biblical references, is the one that permeated our early years in Västerbotten County. It’s an atmosphere far removed from that of classic crime novels, but one favored by our great writers, such as Per Olov Enquist, the author of
The Royal Physician’s Visit
, or Torgny Lindgren, who wrote
The Way of a Serpent
. Both of these men, like Stieg, came from that isolated region in northern Sweden.
Historically speaking, the rest of the country had been under the authority of the Lutheran Church since the sixteenth century, but in the North, dissident and extremely austere Protestant movements sprang up in the nineteenthcentury, notably the Religious Awakening led by the radical pastor Lars Levi Laestadius. The mission of such movements was to save the populace—mainly workers and peasants—from the ravages of alcoholism. Music and dancing were forbidden, women were not allowed to wear makeup, and so on. These breakaway movements mostly disappeared by the mid-twentieth century, after the advent of the industrial society and massive urbanization.
The world of my childhood was peopled by dissident, conservative country folk who belonged to SEM (the Swedish Evangelical Mission), while Stieg’s youth was instead dominated by communist and Social Democratic workers, but all of these people—obstinate, loyal, honest, with a deep sense of morality—were much alike.
Founded in 1856, SEM is a movement dedicated to the renewal of faith within the Lutheran Church. One of its founders, the great lay preacher and author Carl Olof Rosenius, was born in Anäset in Västerbotten County, where my paternal grandmother grew up. One of SEM’s articles of faith is that every Christian must live in a direct relationship with God, taking full responsibility for his or her actions—a relationship that begins, of course, in daily life. Since a personal reading of the Bible is one of the essential pillars of religious observance, the movement has always had a strong focus on literacy and education, and one of its major concerns has been the dissemination of religious texts. In 1868, the door-to-door salesmen who handled that task received the authorization to preach, and their influence is still felt today in the region where Stieg and I grew up, which issometimes called the Bible Belt, like its namesake in the United States. SEM collected money to provide for the work of its preachers and missionaries in Africa and Asia, so even as a
Systematic violence
against women—because this violence is indeed systematic—would be the description used if such violence were directed against union members, Jews, or handicapped persons.” Stieg was quite gratified when the other eight contributors to the anthology, six of them women, wholeheartedly agreed with him.
The third murder was that of Catrine Da Costa, parts of whose dismembered body were found in two plastic bags. Stieg had read a fascinating book about that crime. The author, Hanna Olsson, contacted me recently after reading Stieg’s essay on honor crimes to tell me that she would have loved to work with him. 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.
What more beautiful homage could Stieg pay to women than to make them heroines in a feminist crime novel? And to show them as he saw them: brave, free, strong enough to change their world and refuse to be victims. As for the murderers, Stieg’s indictment of them in the trilogy is encoded in verses from the Bible.
At the Heart of the Bible
THE REMARKABLE atmosphere Stieg created in
The Millennium Trilogy
, with its characteristic moral rigor and wealth of biblical references, is the one that permeated our early years in Västerbotten County. It’s an atmosphere far removed from that of classic crime novels, but one favored by our great writers, such as Per Olov Enquist, the author of
The Royal Physician’s Visit
, or Torgny Lindgren, who wrote
The Way of a Serpent
. Both of these men, like Stieg, came from that isolated region in northern Sweden.
Historically speaking, the rest of the country had been under the authority of the Lutheran Church since the sixteenth century, but in the North, dissident and extremely austere Protestant movements sprang up in the nineteenthcentury, notably the Religious Awakening led by the radical pastor Lars Levi Laestadius. The mission of such movements was to save the populace—mainly workers and peasants—from the ravages of alcoholism. Music and dancing were forbidden, women were not allowed to wear makeup, and so on. These breakaway movements mostly disappeared by the mid-twentieth century, after the advent of the industrial society and massive urbanization.
The world of my childhood was peopled by dissident, conservative country folk who belonged to SEM (the Swedish Evangelical Mission), while Stieg’s youth was instead dominated by communist and Social Democratic workers, but all of these people—obstinate, loyal, honest, with a deep sense of morality—were much alike.
Founded in 1856, SEM is a movement dedicated to the renewal of faith within the Lutheran Church. One of its founders, the great lay preacher and author Carl Olof Rosenius, was born in Anäset in Västerbotten County, where my paternal grandmother grew up. One of SEM’s articles of faith is that every Christian must live in a direct relationship with God, taking full responsibility for his or her actions—a relationship that begins, of course, in daily life. Since a personal reading of the Bible is one of the essential pillars of religious observance, the movement has always had a strong focus on literacy and education, and one of its major concerns has been the dissemination of religious texts. In 1868, the door-to-door salesmen who handled that task received the authorization to preach, and their influence is still felt today in the region where Stieg and I grew up, which issometimes called the Bible Belt, like its namesake in the United States. SEM collected money to provide for the work of its preachers and missionaries in Africa and Asia, so even as a
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