Shopping at IKEA

Strangely flawed, but strangely addictive. Stieg Larsson pays homage in this trilogy to a long tradition of Nordic crime novels drawing in (and upon) contemporary social issues. 

The debt goes deeper – In ‘Dragon Tattoo’ Larsson borrowed a key plot element from Maj Sjöwall’s and Per Wahlöö’s first novel, ‘Roseanna’. Sjöwall and Wahlöö were not just joint authors but also partners in a long term relationship, producing 10 connected crime novels until Wahlöö’s tragically early death.  Larsson had plans for a similar series but he died on the eve of the publication of this trilogy – also tragically young. The trilogy went on to sell 100 million copies. How Larsson’s  estranged family cut his partner of 30 years, Eva Gabrielson, out of any inheritance is a story in its own right.

Which brings us to  IKEA.  Sjöwall and Wahlöö had increased the impact and relatability of their stories by presenting their detectives as ordinary and fallible people, even while exercising exceptional talents in extraordinary circumstances.  Larsson took this a step further, by sending his main (and most exotic) character shopping, and shopping, and shopping.  Just like a regular person.  Curiously though, only this one character.  Maybe because he thought they had a greater need for reality-ballast else they’d be written off as too unbelievable.  So, yes, we have an IKEA shopping list, and we even know which store they bought these items from.  We’re also told exactly which restaurant, fast food store and cafe they patronised and where every character lived or worked – literally grounding the story in the geography of Stockholm and its surrounds, in Grenada, and even (less persuasively) in Australia.

What sustains his work’s popularity and I think makes them extraordinary is his packaging of the story in hundreds of micro-sized chunks delivered at the speed of,well a fast modem for those days (2005), and forcing the reader view it through the eyes of dozens of different characters jumping around in time and space who have only the faintest glimmering, or no idea at all, of what’s happening elsewhere in the story. It’s the perfect style of writing and metaphor for the internet age.

Larsson lived a genuinely edgy life, as a journalist he fought corruption and racism, and was in turn targeted by neo-NAZIs.  Against that background this love letter to Eva is especially impactful on Valentine’s Day 2025.