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Larsson trilogy inspires Stockholm’s latest walking tour

Join Delphine Touitou from AFP as she follows along on Stockholm's newest literary walking tour inspired by the books of the late Stieg Larsson.

Published: 29 July 2008 15:22 CEST
Larsson trilogy inspires Stockholm's latest walking tour

On a recent sun-drenched evening in Stockholm, fans of the bestselling “Millennium” crime trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson met up for a walking tour of the sites featured in the books that have taken Europe by storm.

“Here’s the street where Mikael Blomkvist (the hero of the series) lives in an apartment with a view of the Riddarfjärden canal,” Pia Maria Hallberg, a guide with the Stockholm City Museum, explains in Swedish to the group of 40 people as they stop outside number one on Bellmansgatan street.

“The street was named in honour of poet and composer Carl Michael Bellman who was born in one of these buildings in the 18th century,” she says.

It’s 6:00 pm, and the Stieg Larsson buffs have just begun their tour on Södermalm, one of the many islands that make up the city of Stockholm and which is the scene of much of the intrigue in the trilogy.

Almost eight million copies of the books have been sold since their launch in 2005, including 2.7 million in Sweden — or almost one for every three Swedes in a country of nine million people — and 1.5 million in France. A total of 32 countries have bought the rights to the trilogy.

The first book, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, was released earlier this year in English, and “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is due for English release in 2009.

“Castles in the Sky”, a working title, is expected in English in 2010.

Taking advantage of the series’ success, the Stockholm City Museum has devised a 90-minute walking tour for devotees of Blomkvist, a disgraced investigative journalist, and Lisbeth Salander, a young hacker who grew up with a brutal ex-Soviet spy for a father.

“I read the three books in three weeks. I couldn’t stop. But I didn’t know exactly where the streets were,” says Corinne Eldh, a 22-year-old graphic artist on the tour.

She wanted to see the places with her own eyes, peeking into the restaurants and cafes named in the books, and walk the streets that inspired Larsson, a journalist who died of a heart attack at the age of 50 in 2004, before he could experience the wild success of his trilogy.

‘It has exceeded all our expectations’

“We’re on Götgatan street, which used to be the only road on and off the island of Södermalm,” says Hallberg, adding:

“There, above the Greenpeace sign, are the offices of Millennium, the news magazine Blomkvist works for.”

The tourists smile.

Hallberg, who designed the tour herself, says the trilogy is a great pretext to discover the streets of the Swedish capital.

“We started this tour on July 8. There will be a total of six tours this summer, until September, and the tickets, which cost 80 kronor ($13), are already sold out,” she says.

Given the trilogy’s success abroad, the museum also plans to offer the tours in English and French.

According to Magdalena Hedlund, copyright director at Swedish publishing house Norstedts which released the first book in August 2005, the walking tour just goes to show what a “phenomenon” Millennium has become.

“There are a very few books that are so popular that anyone would want to do a city tour around the sites from the book and to know more about the places where the intrigue takes place,” she says.

The series has also been a huge hit in France.

“Many of us thought it would be a success, but it has exceeded all of our expectations,” said Guillaume Charlet, a spokesman at French publisher Actes Sud which released the first book in June 2006.

“We’re selling 2,000 to 3,000 copies a day, sometimes up to 4,000,” he said, adding that the trilogy was Actes Sud’s best-ever seller, outstripping the likes of US author Paul Auster.

He attributed the success to the atypical characters and the fact that the books are an easy read.

“Stieg Larsson knew how to create very good characters with a ton of details. Lisbeth is really original, and at the same time she moves us,” says Johan Jernberg, a 37-year-old sailor from the Stockholm suburb of Farsta.

“I hate culture, I never go inside a museum. But my wife gave me this ticket and it’s a good way of learning about Stockholm’s history and having a good time,” he says.

At 7:30 pm, the visit ends at Kvarnen, a historic working class beer hall on Södermalm that is Lisbeth Salander’s favourite watering hole.

The die-hard fans turn home, with their thoughts already turning to the film version of the trilogy, due out next year in Sweden.

By AFP’s Delphine Touitou

For members

TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Published: 23 August 2023 11:36 CEST
Updated: 26 August 2023 18:32 CEST
Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate). 

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average. 

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal. 

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun. 

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring. 

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022. 

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices. 

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

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