Answers to Questions I Had While Reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

In the course of reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the other books in his popular Millenium trilogy, I had some questions about Swedish money, Swedish children's stories, Swedish geography, and Swedish foods and drinks. My great-great (great?) grandfather was from Sweden, but I must admit, I know very little about Swedish culture.

How much money is that?
One of the first things I wondered while reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was how many Swedish kronor are in one US dollar. Converting Swedish kronor to American dollars is as easy as going to this website. When Lisbeth Salander inherits 9,312 kronor in The Girl Who Played With Fire, for example,I can use this easy conversion tool to see that 9,312 kronor certainly isn't enough to retire on-that's only $1,450. Currently, one American dollar is worth about 6.4 Swedish kronor.

Who is Kalle Blomkvist?
Early on in Larsson's Millenium series, we learn that Mikael Blomkvist hates being called "Kalle Blomkvist." I had never heard of Kalle Blomkvist, but it is clear that everyone in Sweden knows of the Kalle Blomkvist stories written by famous Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren. These stories were even turned into movies in Sweden (look here). Most Americans are more familiar with Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking character.

Lindgren's Kalle Blomkvist stories were translated into English, but the main character's name was changed to Bill Bergson. I searched for Lindgren's "Bill Bergson" books on Amazon.com, only to discover that the books are out of print in English. Could the worldwide popularity of Larsson's books lead to a renewed interest in Lindgren's stories? We'll see.

Lindgren's stories are well-known in Finland. (Quick geography reminder: Finland is just east of Sweden.) I asked Finnish translator Maarit Laitinen to tell me a little more about Kalle Blomkvist. She admitted that Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking) is her favorite Lindgren character, but noted, "Kalle was the local grocer's teenage son in a small Swedish town. He fancied himself a detective." Read more about boy-detective Bill Bergson/Kalle Blomkvist here.

Can I Visit Hedestad and Hedeby Island in Sweden?
I wouldn't want to visit in winter, but Hedeby Island would be lovely in summer, I bet. Oh, wait. It doesn't exist! According to this Imagine.Travel article, die-hard fans of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo can visit Stockholm to see many of the places-restaurants, bars, Blomkvist's apartment building-mentioned in Larsson's books. The closest any of us can come to fictional Hedestad and Hedeby Island is probably the real-life town of Gnesta, located 45 miles south of Stockholm, where the scenes depicting Hedestad in the Swedish movie version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo were filmed (source, source 2).

Coffee and Sandwiches, and Billy's Pan Pizza
There must be hundreds of references to people drinking coffee in Larsson's Millenium trilogy. Someone is always putting on another pot of coffee or offering coffee to someone else. I got a caffeine buzz just from reading about all the coffee-drinking!

A quick search on Wikipedia reveals that "Sweden is one of the heaviest coffee drinking countries in the world, behind Finland" (source). I asked my Finnish contact how many cups of coffee the average Finn drinks. Laitinen said, "I think the average Finn drinks three large mugs of coffee per day, but as I'm sure you already know, the coffee here is a lot stronger than in the U.S...So, maybe around six cups of coffee?" Now I wonder if they ever sleep!

Fans of Larsson's books know that Lisbeth Salander, in addition to drinking lots of coffee and smoking lots of cigarettes, likes to eat a pizza snack called Billy's Pan Pizza. I wondered if Billy's Pan Pizza is a real food. Yes, it is! It's a cheap, frozen single-serving of pizza, available in 11 different flavors. See a picture and read more about it here. Go here to watch some entertaining commercials for Billy's Pan Pizza. (It looks like you can't throw a party or have a romantic dinner with your Swedish girlfriend without Billy's Pan Pizza-beef bearnaise flavor! Yum!)

Blomkvist and Salander also eat a lot of sandwiches. Sometimes they have sandwiches for breakfast (with their coffee, of course). I recall a scene in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in which Salander fixes a big plate of assorted open-faced sandwiches, some with fish and egg toppings that made my stomach turn. I found some tips on how to make Scandinavian open-faced sandwiches very similar to those described in Larsson's book here.

A side note regarding sandwiches...I'll never forget the day my family's German exchange student admitted that she and all her fellow exchange-student friends thought our American sandwiches were disgusting-because of the mayonnaise. "The bread is already sweet! Why do you need sweet mayonnaise, too?" she wondered. I couldn't answer that question. After staying with her family in Germany for two weeks and eating lots of sandwiches prepared the German way, with butter instead of mayonnaise, I realized she had a good point. So I know I shouldn't diss Swedish sandwiches without actually trying one.

Should everyone read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?
My guess is that a lot of people start reading this book just to see what the big deal is, and then, when they're not immediately hooked, stop reading. If you're at that point right now-not sure if you can get through another page-my advice is to keep going. It does get better, and then you won't want to put it down. Lisbeth Salander is a fascinating character!

Thanks to Stieg Larsson's books, I know a little more about Swedish culture than I did before.

Sources:
Larsson, Stieg, and Reg Keeland. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Larsson, Stieg, and Reg Keeland. The Girl Who Played with Fire. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
http://coinmill.com/SEK_USD.html
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=kalle+blomkvist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrid_Lindgren
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bergson
http://news.imagine.travel/topic/hedestad/
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?sec=lifebookshelf&file=/2010/7/27/lifebookshelf/6717565
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132620/locations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_cuisine
http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/2010/07/billys_pan_pizza_comfort_food.php
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/09/is-billys-pan-pizza-in-the-stieg-larsson-millennium-trilogy-real-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo.html
http://www.daughtersofnorway.org/recipes/smorbrd.html

Very special thanks to Michael Segers and Maarit Laitinen.