Lisbeth Salander

Lisbeth Salander
Millennium series character
First appearance	The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Last appearance	The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
Created by	Stieg Larsson
Portrayed by	Noomi Rapace (Swedish) Rooney Mara (American)
Information
Aliases	Wasp
Occupation	Computer hacker in the "Hacker Republic"
Family	Agneta Sophia Salander (mother) Aleksandr Zalachenko (father) Camilla Salander (twin sister) Ronald Niedermann (half-brother)
Nationality	Swedish

Lisbeth Salander is a fictional character created by Swedish author and journalist Stieg Larsson. She is the main character of Larsson's award-winning Millennium series along with Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth first appears in the novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, (original Swedish title, Män som hatar kvinnor, literally "Men who hate women" in English).  She is also featured in The Girl Who Played with Fire, (original Swedish title: Flickan som lekte med elden, literally "The girl who played with fire") and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, (original Swedish title: Luftslottet som sprängdes, literally "The castle in the air that was blown up").

Character profile

Lisbeth Salander has red hair, which she dyes black. Upon her first appearance in the series, she is described as "a pale, skinny young woman who had hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows. She had a wasp tattoo about an inch long on her neck, a tattooed loop around the biceps of her left arm and another around her left ankle. On those occasions when she had been wearing a tank top, a dragon tattoo can be seen on her left shoulder blade."

Salander is a world class computer hacker. Under the name "Wasp", she becomes a prominent figure in the international hacker community, known as the "Hacker Republic". She uses her computer skills as a means to earn a living, doing investigative work for Milton Security. She has a photographic memory, and is skillful at concealing her identity, possessing passports in different names and physical disguises that she uses to travel undetected around Sweden and worldwide. 

The survivor of a traumatic childhood, Salander is highly introverted, asocial and has difficulty connecting to people and making friends. She is particularly hostile to men who abuse women, and takes special pleasure in exposing and punishing them. This is representative of Larsson's personal views and a major theme throughout the entire trilogy. 

She has a complicated relationship with investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, which veers back and forth between romance and hostility throughout the trilogy. She also has an on-again off-again romantic relationship with a beautiful lesbian, Miriam Wu.

Development and descriptions

Larsson stated in interviews that he based the character of Lisbeth Salander on what he imagined Pippi Longstocking might have been like as an adult. In the trilogy, Salander has the name "V. Kulla" displayed on the door of her apartment on the top floor of Fiskargatan 9 in Stockholm, Sweden. "V. Kulla" is an abbreviation of "Villa Villekulla", the name of Pippi Longstocking's house.

Throughout the series, Blomkvist speculates that Salander might have Asperger's syndrome, but her adversaries officially diagnose her as a paranoid psychopath: Bjurman, one of her tormenters, described her as “a sick, murderous, insane fucking person. A loose cannon. A whore.” Doctor Teleborian described her as "paranoid", "psychotic", "obsessive", "schizophrenic", and an "egomaniacal psychopath".

Larsson himself stated that he thought that she might be looked upon as an unusual kind of sociopath, due to her traumatic life experiences and inability to conform to social norms.

In spite of all the opinions and speculations about her mental health diagnoses, in the end she is declared sane and competent:

"In the exhilarating court scene in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Salander’s lawyer, Anita Giannini, tramples Dr. Teleborian as she demonstrates that Lisbeth is 'just as sane and intelligent as anyone in this room.' This victory puts Lisbeth back on the right side of the asylum’s doors, as her declaration of incompetence is rescinded, then and there. Sanity prevails."

Writers have described her as a "fiercely unconventional and darkly kooky antiheroine", a "superhero", a "misfit" and "an androgynous, asocial, bisexually active...loner who makes a living as a computer hacker..."

Storyline in books

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

In The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander is introduced as a gifted, but deeply troubled, researcher and computer hacker working for Milton Security. Her boss, Dragan Armansky, commissions her to research disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist at the behest of a wealthy businessman, Henrik Vanger. When Blomkvist finds out that Salander hacked his computer, he hires her to assist him in investigating the disappearance of Vanger's grandniece, Harriet, 40 years earlier. Salander uses her research skills to uncover a series of murders, dating back decades, tied to Harriet's disappearance. During the investigation, Salander and Blomkvist become lovers.

The novel reveals Salander was declared legally incompetent as a child, and is under the care of legal guardian Holgar Palmgren, one of the few people in the world she trusts and cares for. When Palmgren suffers a stroke, the court appoints her a new guardian: Nils Bjurman, a sadist who forces Salander to perform oral sex in return for access to her allowance. In a second sex session at his flat, he tortures, rapes and sodomizes her, unaware that she is recording his actions with a hidden camera. A few days later, she returns to his flat and, after disabling him with a taser, fastens him to his own bed with his own bondage equipment. She then explains that she will release the recording unless he restores her access to her money and recommends that she be declared legally competent. She then sodomizes him with an anal plug and tattoos the words "I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST" on his abdomen, and explains that if he ever approaches her again she will kill him. 

Salander eventually deduces from her research that Martin Vanger, Henrik's grandnephew and Harriet's brother, is a serial killer who as a teenager was "initiated" into rape and murder by his father, Gottfried. She then finds Blomkvist just in time to save him from Martin, who is in the midst of torturing him. She pursues Martin on her motorcycle, but he is killed when he crashes into an oncoming truck. Salander later uses her hacking skills to discover that Harriet Vanger is alive and hiding in Australia, and to get sensitive information about Blomkvist's arch-rival, corrupt media magnate Hans-Erik Wennerström. With the information uncovered by Salander, Blomkvist publishes an exposé article and book that ruins Wennerström and transforms Blomkvist's magazine, Millennium, into one of the most respected and profitable in Sweden. During her investigation of Wennerström, she uses her hacking skills and a series of disguises to withdraw billions of kronor from one of Wennerström's off-shore accounts.

At the end of the book, Salander acknowledges to herself that she has fallen in love with Blomkvist. On her way to tell him so, however, she sees him with his longtime lover, Millennium editor Erika Berger. Heartbroken, she abruptly cuts off all contact with him.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire begins with Salander returning to Sweden after traveling for a year. Shortly afterward Salander is falsely implicated in the murder of three people — Bjurman and two of Blomkvist's colleagues. The frame-up is in fact an elaborate conspiracy between her biological father, former Soviet spy Alexander Zalachenko, and the Section, an illegal faction within SÄPO, the Swedish Security Service, whose members had protected him after he defected from the USSR. Blomkvist later nicknames the "Zalachenko Club". Zalachenko had his son (and Salander's half-brother) Ronald Neidermann kill both Blomkvist's colleagues, who were investigating his prostitution business, and Bjurman, whose attempts to get revenge on Salander were attracting too much attention. The Section then falsely incriminates Salander to cover up their complicity in the concealment of Zalachenko's crimes.

Blomkvist tries to help Salander, even though she herself wants nothing to do with him. By the end of the novel, he follows her to Zalachenko's farm, where he finds her seriously injured after a confrontation with Zalachenko and Neidermann. He then calls an ambulance, saving her life by having her air-lifted to hospital.

The novel also expands upon Salander's childhood. She is portrayed as having been an extremely bright but asocial child who would violently lash out at anyone who threatened or picked on her. This was in part the result of a troubled home life; Zalachenko repeatedly abused her mother, but escaped punishment because the Section perceived his value to the Swedish State as being more important than her mother's civil rights. The abuse also destroyed Salander's relationship with her sister, Camilla, who repressed her memories of the abuse and saw her father as gentle and loving.

One day when Salander was 12, Zalachenko beat her mother so badly that she sustained permanent brain damage. In retaliation, Salander set her father on fire, leaving him permanently disfigured and in chronic pain. The Section, fearing this would lead to their exposure, had the girl declared legally insane and sent to a Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Uppsala. While there, she was placed under the direct surveillance of psychologist Dr. Peter Teleborian, who had earlier conspired with the Section to have her declared insane. During her stay at the hospital, Teleborian put her in restraints for the most trivial of infractions — mostly to vent his repressed sexual desire for her. Teleborian declared her legally incompetent in a conspiracy with the Section, in order to make sure no one would ever believe her accounts of what they had done. They were also instrumental in appointing Bjurman, a lawyer in their employ, her guardian after Palmgren's stroke.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

In the third and final novel of the series - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest - Salander is arrested for the three murders while she recuperates in hospital. Zalachenko, who is a patient in the same hospital, is murdered by one of the Section, who then tries to kill Salander; fortunately, her lawyer (Annika Giannini, Blomkvist's sister) had barred the door upon hearing a disturbance. 

Due to her deep-seated mistrust of authority, Salander refuses at first to cooperate in any way with her defence, relying instead on her friends in Sweden's hacker community. They eventually help Blomkvist discover the full scope of the Section's conspiracy, which he strives to publish at the risk of his own life. Salander eventually writes, and passes to Giannini, an exact description of how she has been treated by her guardian, Bjurman, but written in such a way as to make it sound fantastical and to utterly mislead the prosecution. 

At Salander's trial, Salander is defiant and uncooperative with the prosecution. The prosecuting counsel uses testimony from Teleborian, appearing as their principal witness, to depict her as insane and in need of long term care; Teleborian dismisses Salander's account of Bjurman's behaviour as a fantasy. Annika then destroys Teleborian's credibility by introducing the recording of Salander's rape, and adduces extensive evidence of the Section's plot, published in Millennium that morning by Blomkvist. At the same time as Annika starts questioning Teleborian the ten members of the Section are arrested and charged with a long list of crimes. Salander's trial is briefly interrupted to permit the arrest of Teleborian for possession of child pornography, which was uncovered by Salander's fellow hackers. Salander is set free the same day, her name cleared.

After she is cleared of the charges, Salander receives word that, as Zalachenko's daughter, she is entitled to a small inheritance and one of his properties. She refuses the money, but goes to a disused factory she has inherited. There, she is attacked by Niedermann, who has been hiding there since shortly after the confrontation with Salander at Zalachenko's farm. She nails his feet to the floor, and then calls a gang who wants him dead to tell them of Niedermann's whereabouts. After they arrive to kill Niedermann, she calls the police.

That night, Blomkvist shows up at her door, and the two reconcile.

Portrayals in films

In the Swedish film trilogy, she is played by Noomi Rapace and as a child by Tehilla Blad. In the American film of the first book, she is played by Rooney Mara, who has also been signed to play the character in the forthcoming English language films of The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.

Mara received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress on January 24, 2012 for her critically acclaimed portrayal of Lisbeth.

External links

• The Stieg Larsson Trilogy from Quercus, publishers of Stieg Larsson
• The official Millennium site of Nordstedt Publishing
• The Girl Who Played with Fire
• This Week's Cover: Why we're so fascinated by Lisbeth Salander in 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' - Entertainment Weekly's staff, 2011/12/29