Lisbeth Salander as Pippi Longstocking
This is the fourth article in a series guest edited by Bruce Robbins. Some years into the fashion, Nordic noir remains something of a mystery. Known for its pronounced left-wing tendencies and an uncompromisingly critical view of the Scandinavian welfare state, the genre has won huge audiences in a global climate of neoliberalism and among fiction, film, and television audiences abroad that do not seem to share the social and political assumptions of the region. But perhaps we have been too hasty in identifying those assumptions and their meaning in the countries of origin. The essays gathered here, from inside and outside Scandinavia, try to consider this enormously successful cultural export with fresh eyes, reflecting anew on why Nordic noir should have emerged where and when it did and on the gender and eco-political concerns as well as the concern with the welfare state that have animated its cross-cultural creativity.
Audiences around the world have understood Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Män som hatar kvinnor, 2005); The Girl Who Played with Fire (Flickan som lekte med elden, 2006), and The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Luftslottet som sprängdes, 2007) - as describing with informed and polemical vigor an authentic social and geographical milieu: that is, contemporary Sweden. Slavoj Žižek, for example, sees in the trilogy evidence of "how far [Sweden] has been counter-reformed since the mythical '60s."1 The emphasis on Larsson's political seriousness and the grim reality he wants to depict is natural, but there are things it is bound to overlook. To Swedish readers, for example, the trilogy is loaded with allusions to well known fiction, in particular to children's books by the popular Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren. Politically engaged or not, Swedish readers will be amused by the way the depiction of Lisbeth Salander refers to the naughty, rule-breaking Pippi Longstocking, while that of Carl Mikael Blomkvist repeatedly evokes Lindgren's childish master detective, Kalle Blomkvist - in English, known unfortunately as Billy Bergson. In a Swedish context, the reader must ask what it means that Larsson's grown-ups are set against the backdrop of Lindgren's children. One answer to that question is that, rather than the simple narrative of political decline Žižek tells, this is also a story of political growing up: the depiction of Salander-as-Pippi serves to show that her anti-statist and immature behavior at the beginning of the story is a dead-end operation, and that if she wants to obtain justice, she eventually needs to become a legal Swedish citizen.
Lindgren's children's books are already present on the first page of the first chapter of the first book in the trilogy. The first time Blomkvist is addressed outside the courtroom, another journalist calls him Kalle Blomkvist (in Swedish "Kalle" is a diminutive for "Carl"); there is no way of missing the intertextual reference. Blomkvist's first case is commonly referred to as the case of "the Bear Gang," since the robbers were wearing masks from the Disney cartoon world.2 Accordingly, the robbers are named after the criminal Beagle Boys gang in the Donald Duck cartoons. Thereafter in the first few chapters, the reader is repeatedly reminded of this connection; every time Blomkvist meets a new character and they discuss his recent failure in the scandalous Wennerström affair, he is referred to as Lindgren's child detective.
Lisbeth Salander first appearance offers the greatest illumination with regards to Lindgren. In the scene where she presents her research on Blomkvist to her employer Armansky and his principal Frodhe who is also the lawyer of the famous financier Henry Vanger, she mentions how much Blomkvist dislikes being referred to as Lindgren's child detective. He must hate it as much as she would, she says, if she was to be called Pippi Longstocking in the newspapers.
The children's book motif confirms Larsson's interest in reminding his audience of the meta-fictional dimensions of the text. Sometimes this play with fictitious characters is integrated in the hide-and-seek game staged by Salander and Blomkvist. One of the most amusing passages occurs when Blomkvist, in part two, eventually finds Salander's hiding place - that is, her new flashy flat in Fiskargatan in Stockholm. In search of her door, he sees the name plate "V. Kulla," and realizes that it must be the place. In the Swedish original, Blomqvist just slaps his forehead and smiles because, "where else should Kalle Blomkvist look for Lisbeth Salander?" Any Swedish reader would realize that V. Kulla alludes to Pippi's home, Villa Villekulla.3 In the English language version, this must be spelled out: " - but where else should Kalle Blomkvist, nicknamed for an Astrid Lindgren character, look for her than at Pippi Longstocking's Villa Villekulla?"4 Afterwards, Salander, having been almost killed and buried by her father and her half-brother Niedermann, is successfully saved at the hospital in Gothenburg. Suspected of several murders, she is kept in custody and isolation while she recovers. Nevertheless, Blomkvist manages - with the help of a loyal cleaner and Salander's surgeon - to sneak in a computer and the thought-provoking note: "You're the hacker, work it out!/ Kalle B." The joke makes Salander realize that the password must have something to do with "Pippi Bloody Longstocking."5
Like Pippi, Salander has no formal education and no training in how to behave in normal society. Still, like Pippi, she also shows a wide range of skills and competences. As a child, she too is solitary, with few human friends. Larsson replaces Pippi's friends Tommy and Annika with two other siblings, Blomkvist and his sister - also called Annika. Larsson also gives a darkly comic twist to Pippi's family background. In Lindgren's book Pippi's mother is dead and her father is portrayed as a buccaneer captain, later a "negro king." In Larsson, this fairy tale version is exposed as a child's idealization: the truth is Salander's constantly absent and mentally-shattered mother and her deeply malevolent father, the Russian spy and criminal gang leader Zalachenko.
Many scenes in the novels are also narrated according to Lindgren's formula, which is to say a hilarious and exaggerated parody of action. One example is when the tiny girlish Salander outfights two notoriously violent bodybuilding bikers more than twice her size. Another is when Salander, in the Epilogue, visits her deceased father's dilapidated industrial site and is attacked by the physically monstrous Niedermann. Salander might not be as physically strong as Pippi, but what she lacks in muscle she makes up for in fighting spirit, speed, and recourse to unconventional methods and tools that take her opponents by surprise. In the last example, she uses a nail gun to fasten Niedermann's foot to the floor. She leaves him struggling to free himself as he thinks, "She's supernatural," and concludes, "She's a monster." Salander thus takes her place among those imagined demons by whom Niedermann, like a child, feels haunted in the dark.6
However, these correspondences between Blomkvist and Salander and the protagonists of Lindgren's children's books are not merely playful. They undercut some of Larsson's apparent politics, bringing into the trilogy an impulse toward positive change that is of course more associated with children's books in general than with Nordic noir. Like all children, they suggest, Larsson's protagonists have to be fostered and nurtured in order to become mature and independent individuals, socialized citizens and well-informed adults. It's not the first thing readers will think about the Millennium trilogy.
On one level, Larsson's trilogy is a roman-à-clef: to the Swedish audience, it refers unmistakably to certain well-known political situations and celebrities. On another level, it is a metafictional text, making fun of these recognized facts and characters by placing them in a fictional world that is so visibly inspired by Lindgren's children´s stories. One might speculate that in Blomkvist and Salander Larsson shows what might have become of Lindgren's child protagonists, Kalle Blomkvist (Bill Bergson) and Pippi Longstocking, if they grew up and became Swedish citizens and still went on acting according to the formulas of children's fiction. Lindgren's do-goody detective Kalle would probably work as a crusading journalist revealing and eliminating violations of citizen's rights. On the other hand, there is no chance that Lindgren's Pippi would become an altruistic social reformer. She would reserve her anger for extreme cases when those she cares for personally are treated poorly. Like Salander, Pippi might well have been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Like Salander, she would be governed in her fight for justice and equality by a particularly feminist passion. Salander really does show what kind of person Pippi would become as an adult equipped with contemporary technology and methodology.
What do Larsson's allusions to Pippi Longstocking add to his message about "men who hate women"? Larsson chose this as the Swedish title of the trilogy's first volume and may also have intended it to be the title of the trilogy as a whole. All of his female characters are on some occasion exposed to sex discrimination, no matter what social class or position they hold in society. The tool chosen to help them and to rid the society of misogyny is Salander. It becomes gradually obvious that Salander is not only fighting for justice and equality for herself, as Lindgren's Pippi would have done; she is a crusading soldier risking her life in order to support other victimized women. There is of course a question, especially in Scandinavia, as to whether the goal of contributing to the common good sanctions her use of violence and other illegal methods. To the Swedish reader, who will be anxious about this question, the fact that she is a grown-up Pippi is reassuring; the reader knows that Pippi always has the best of intentions, whatever the final result. This does not resolve the question of how much respect the legal system is due when it is clearly unable to deal with the problem of men who hate women. But Salander's unorthodox methods make visible the holes in the safety net so that (that is the premise) they can be eventually mended.
Pippi herself could not explore the devastating consequences of having misogynic men within the Nordic welfare state. That task requires a mature version of Pippi. Larsson's heroine does not show her strength, as Pippi does, by lifting her horse above her head. She comes onstage as a hacker and cunning researcher as well as a victimized woman hungry for revenge. One might classify her among the many female psychopaths who populate Nordic noir. Unlike a true psychopath, however, she is capable of adapting to Swedish society. Indeed, she comes to the conclusion that justice can only be achieved within the legal system of the state. In order to accomplish what she wants, she has to expose herself in the court room as a wronged child and sexually abused woman. In so doing, she becomes a true Swedish heroine, and she is rewarded as such. In the end, then, Larsson's trilogy justifies and confirms the Nordic welfare state, which for all its faults and blind spots (as pointed out by Žižek, among others) remains necessary in order to guarantee social security and individual freedom. With her mission accomplished, Salander does not leave on her white horse like Pippi, or even on her distinctive black motorbike. Instead, she opens the door to Swedish society when she recognizes her lawyer, Annika, as a friend and invites the lawyer's brother, Blomkvist, into her flat for coffee.
Yvonne Leffler is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her main areas of research are Scandinavian nineteenth literature and popular fiction, including the Gothic novel, crime fiction, horror and romance. Recent publications include Horror as Pleasure: The Aesthetics of Horror Fiction (2000), "Early Crime Fiction in Nordic Literature" (2014, and "Chick Lit as Healing and Self-help manual?" (2014). She is currently directing a project on "Swedish Women Writers on Export in the 19th Century," where she is investigating the transcultural dissemination and reception of Swedish bestselling novelists.
ALSO IN THIS SERIES:
Bruce Robbins, "The Detective is Suspended: Nordic Noir and the Welfare State"
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, "The Policeman in the Ill-Fitting Uniform; or, How to Write Crime Fiction After Utøya"
Anne-Marie Mai, "Eco-Crime: Scandinavian Literature Takes on the Environmental Crisis."
Peter Simonsen, "'A Shadow Had Descended': Alzheimer's in Henning Mankell's The Troubled Man."
- Slavoj Žižek. Absolute Recoil. Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. London and New York: Verso, 2014. Page 22, footnote 25: "Apropos Sweden in the 1960's, perhaps Pippin should read a Mankell or Larsson detective novel to get an idea of what Sweden is like today, and how far it has been counter-reformed since the mythical '60s".[⤒]
- In Sweden the Beagle Boys are called Björnligan, which literally translates as "the Bear Gang." Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, trans. Reg Keeland. London: MacLehose Press, 2008, p. 9.[⤒]
- My translation from Stieg Larsson, Flickan som lekte med elden, Stockholm: Norstedts, 2006, s. 574.[⤒]
- Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire, trans. Reg Keeland. London: MacLehose Press, 2009, p. 587.[⤒]
- Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, trans. Reg Keeland. London: MacLehose Press 2010, p. 315.[⤒]
- Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, 736.[⤒]