50 Fun Facts About The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was first published in Sweden under a title meaning what in English?

Men Who Hate Women was the title Stieg Larsson refused to let his Swedish publisher change. The English edition, released after his death, renamed the book anyway.

Stieg Larsson said he based Lisbeth Salander on which children's book heroine imagined as an adult?

Pippi Longstocking is hidden on Salander's own front door in the series: the nameplate reads V. Kulla, short for Villa Villekulla, the name of Pippi's house.

What killed Stieg Larsson at 50, before The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had even been printed?

A heart attack struck after he climbed the stairs to his office, with three finished novels accepted by a publisher but none yet in print. He never saw a single copy sold.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination as Lisbeth Salander in the 2011 Hollywood film?

Rooney Mara won the part after two and a half months of auditions, then had her brow pierced and her eyebrows bleached to play the hacker. Her nose and lip rings were fake.

What does Henrik Vanger receive on every birthday in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, convinced a killer sends it?

A pressed flower in a frame had been his grandniece Harriet's yearly gift, so each new one feels like a taunt from her murderer. Who really sends them is one of the story's last revelations.

Which actor gained weight and adopted a neutral accent to play Mikael Blomkvist in the 2011 Hollywood film?

Daniel Craig was up against George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Viggo Mortensen for the role, and signed only once the studios had worked out a schedule around Skyfall and Cowboys & Aliens.

Which Led Zeppelin track, sung by Karen O, plays over the opening titles of 2011's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Immigrant Song was the director's own suggestion, and Led Zeppelin licensed it only for the trailer and the title sequence, where the cover plays over a nightmare of black ooze.

Which offence is journalist Mikael Blomkvist convicted of at the start of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Libel costs him a three-month prison sentence and his seat on his magazine's board, after his claims about a billionaire financier collapse in court. The disgrace is why he accepts the Vanger job.

Which American director made the 2011 Hollywood film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

David Fincher saw the murder mystery as something of a red herring: the thing that throws the two leads together. Their relationship, he said, is what the story keeps returning to.

Which actress became an international star as Lisbeth Salander in the 2009 Swedish film trilogy?

Noomi Rapace took her surname on marrying: she and her husband picked a brand-new name that means bird of prey in French and Italian. The role brought her a BAFTA nomination.

In Stieg Larsson's novel, in which country is the long-missing Harriet Vanger finally found alive?

Australia is where she runs a sheep-farming company in the book, decades after fleeing the family island as a teenager. The 2011 film moved her hiding place much nearer to Sweden.

What do the cryptic names and numbers left behind by Harriet Vanger turn out to refer to?

Bible verses on the list match a string of unsolved murders across Sweden, which is how the two investigators realise they are hunting a serial killer.

Which rare mental gift makes hacker Lisbeth Salander such a formidable investigator?

Photographic memory is only one of her tools: she also keeps passports in several names and uses disguises to travel unnoticed. Blomkvist wonders whether she is on the autism spectrum.

Which novel is the second book in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, picking up Lisbeth Salander's story?

The Girl Who Played with Fire kept its Swedish title in translation, unlike the first book. It won the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award and puts Salander on the run, wrongly suspected of three murders.

Who traps Mikael Blomkvist in a hidden basement and admits to decades of murders in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Martin Vanger, chief executive of the family firm, keeps the chamber concealed inside his own house. Yet he swears he had nothing to do with Harriet vanishing.

Which star of The Crown took over as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl in the Spider's Web?

Claire Foy led a wholly new cast in the 2018 sequel, adapted from the first novel written after Stieg Larsson's death. It earned less at the box office than it cost to make.

Which high-street fashion chain sold a Lisbeth Salander-inspired clothing line to promote the 2011 Hollywood film?

H&M teamed up with the film's costume designer, Trish Summerville, on a collection of leather jackets, faux-leather trousers and studded boots meant to look gritty and lived-in.

Which actor plays the elderly Henrik Vanger in the 2011 Hollywood film, with Julian Sands as his younger self?

Christopher Plummer called Henrik the nicest old guy in the whole book, in a family where everybody is a bit suspect. He set out to give the old man an irony he found missing on the page.

Which Enya hit does the killer play while preparing to torture Mikael Blomkvist in the 2011 Hollywood film?

Orinoco Flow was the leading man's idea: he found it on his own iPod when the director wanted the murderer to work to his favourite music, and the crew fell about laughing.

Which firm, run by Dragan Armansky, employs Lisbeth Salander as a freelance researcher and hacker?

Milton Security hands her the job that starts everything: at Henrik Vanger's request, her boss has her dig into Mikael Blomkvist's life before the old man hires him.

Which billionaire financier beats Mikael Blomkvist in court, only to be ruined by him at the story's end?

Hans-Erik Wennerström falls when Salander hacks his computer and finds crimes far beyond the original story. Blomkvist's article and book then destroy him and make the magazine nationally famous.

Under which insect alias is Lisbeth Salander known to fellow hackers in the Millennium novels?

Wasp is also inked on her neck in the first novel, a small tattoo she later has removed at a clinic in Genoa because it made her too easy to identify.

Which editor of Millennium magazine is both Mikael Blomkvist's business partner and his long-time lover?

Erika Berger is married, and her husband knows about and accepts the affair. Seeing the pair together at the end is what makes a heartbroken Salander bin her Christmas gift and cut contact.

Which lawyer becomes Lisbeth Salander's legal guardian after a stroke fells her trusted protector?

Nils Bjurman abuses the power the court gives him over her money and her freedom. Salander secretly films him, then uses the recording to blackmail her way to independence.

In which country does a disguised Lisbeth Salander empty the villain's secret bank accounts in the 2011 Hollywood film?

Switzerland is where, in disguise, she removes two billion euros from his accounts. The scenes were shot in Zurich, at the Dolder Grand Hotel and the airport.

Which anti-racist magazine did Stieg Larsson co-found, the model for Millennium in his novels?

Expo was set up to track Sweden's far right, work that reportedly kept Larsson under death threats for years. Like the fictional Millennium, it leaned left and was often short of money.

Stieg Larsson spent his youth producing fanzines devoted to which genre, long before he wrote crime novels?

Science fiction was his first love: he put out around 30 fanzine issues in the 1970s and went on to chair Sweden's largest SF fan club. Two of his early stories later surfaced in Sweden's National Library.

Which Danish director made the 2009 Swedish film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Niels Arden Oplev's film took more than 100 million dollars, yet he passed on directing the two sequels for lack of time. He later directed the pilot episode of Mr. Robot.

Which Academy Award did the 2011 Hollywood version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo win, from five nominations?

Best Film Editing went to Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, the same pair who had taken the Oscar for The Social Network. The film's four other nominations all fell short.

Which American rock frontman co-wrote the nearly three-hour score for 2011's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross spent fourteen months on it, chasing what Reznor called the sound of coldness, emotional as well as physical. The score went on to win a Grammy.

Which Swedish actor plays the Vanger company's murderous chief executive in the 2011 Hollywood film?

Stellan Skarsgård relished playing the character in two totally different ways, charming host and killer. His director asked him to build the part without reference to the book.

Which American actress plays the magazine editor who is Mikael Blomkvist's lover in the 2011 Hollywood film?

Robin Wright's character runs the magazine as its editor-in-chief. Two years later she began her award-winning run in the Netflix political drama House of Cards.

Which Swedish author, Zlatan Ibrahimović's biographer, continued the Millennium series after Stieg Larsson's death?

David Lagercrantz wrote three sequels, beginning with The Girl in the Spider's Web, without access to the unfinished fourth novel that Larsson had left on his laptop.

Who inherited Stieg Larsson's estate, including his royalties, because his will had never been witnessed?

His father and brother received everything, while Eva Gabrielsson, his partner since 1974, had no legal claim. The invalid will had named a branch of the Communist Workers League.

Which relative of Stieg Larsson, a rebellious teenager who wanted a dragon tattoo, helped inspire Lisbeth Salander?

His niece Therese wore black, practised kickboxing and told him more than once that she wanted that tattoo. He emailed her while writing to ask how she would react in certain situations.

In the 2011 Hollywood film, which city has Harriet Vanger been hiding in under a cousin's identity?

London replaces the novel's far more distant refuge. In the film she has been living as her cousin Anita, who smuggled her off the island and later died in a car accident.

How does the serial killer die while fleeing Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson's novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

He crashes into a truck on the highway, deliberately, with Salander in pursuit. The 2011 film gave him a different end: his car leaves the road and hits a propane tank.

What cover story explains Mikael Blomkvist's year on the Vanger estate in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Writing the family history gives him an excuse to question every relative on the island. His real task is the forty-year-old cold case of a girl who vanished.

On which e-reader platform did Stieg Larsson become the first author to sell a million electronic books?

Amazon Kindle sales passed the million mark in July 2010, almost six years after his death. By then the trilogy had sold tens of millions of copies worldwide.

Which town did Stieg Larsson invent for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a novel otherwise set in real Swedish places?

Hedestad is the small town beside Hedeby Island, where the Vanger family estate sits and Mikael Blomkvist spends his year digging into the past.

Which Swedish actor played Mikael Blomkvist in all three 2009 films before turning villain in John Wick?

Michael Nyqvist followed the trilogy with two Hollywood antagonists: Kurt Hendricks in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, then Viggo Tarasov three years later.

In which African country did Stieg Larsson spend part of 1977 teaching female guerrillas to use mortars?

Eritrea drew on a skill from his national service, when the Swedish Army trained him as a mortarman. He had to abandon the work after contracting a kidney disease.

Under which pseudonym is the translator credited on English editions of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Reg Keeland is the alias the American translator asked for, because he felt his British publisher had needlessly prettified the English text.

Which Nordic crime-writing prize, named after a Dashiell Hammett novel, did The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo win?

The Glass Key is a real key made of glass, handed over each year by Scandinavia's crime writers. Larsson won it a second time in 2008, for the third novel of the trilogy.

Which Swedish film prize, named after a beetle, did 2009's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo win for Best Film?

Guldbagge statuettes are gilded copper beetles weighing over a kilogram. The 2009 production also took the audience award, and its star was named Best Actress.

Which Schindler's List screenwriter spent six months adapting The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for Hollywood?

Steven Zaillian spent three of those months just analysing the story, then built his script in five acts rather than three. He had not read the bestseller before he was hired.

Which country never saw 2011's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in cinemas because censors rejected the uncut film?

India's censor board judged the picture unsuitable for public viewing unless it was altered, and the studio chose to protect the director's vision rather than trim it.

Which extremist cause did Harald Vanger and other older relatives embrace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

The Nazi movement taints several of the older Vangers, some of them wartime sympathizers. The theme was personal: Larsson spent years researching Sweden's extreme right as a journalist.

Which American humorist spoofed Stieg Larsson's thrillers in a New Yorker piece titled The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut?

Nora Ephron's spoof was one of a wave of parodies; others include The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo and The Girl with the Sturgeon Tattoo.

Which DC Comics imprint turned The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo into graphic novels scripted by Denise Mina?

Vertigo planned two graphic novels for each book in the trilogy. The first volume, drawn by Leonardo Manco and Andrea Mutti, appeared in November 2012.