Character page for Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Trilogy and its Swedish and American film series adaptations.
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Mikael Blomkvist
Played by: Michael Nyqvist (2009), Daniel Craig (2011), Sverrir Gudnason (2018)
Dubbed in European French by: Pierre-François Pistorio (2009), Éric Herson-Macarel (2011), Alexandre Gillet (2018)
A Swedish financial reporter who co-owns the magazine Millennium with Erika Berger; together they try to make the magazine an avenging angel against Corrupt Corporate Executives. He got his start by foiling a set of masked bank robbers, and has gained a reputation for excellent research... at least until he's convicted of libel against the corporate magnate Hans-Erik Wennerström just prior to the first novel.
- Amazon Chaser: One of Mikael's defining features (and perhaps the reason why he attracts so many women) is because he isn't afraid to (and actually seems more attracted to) more accomplished and/or higher-class women.
- Author Avatar: Middle-aged crusading journalist created by... a middle-aged crusading journalist.
- The Charmer: He's able to seduce women just with words and projects an aura of calm and respect.
- Distressed Dude: He's generally not as active as Lisbeth, and he nearly got killed by Martin Vanger in Book 1.
- Embarrassing Nickname: "Kalle Blomkvist" because it's really the name of the protagonist in a series of children's mystery novels.
- Ethical Slut: He sleeps around with many women throughout the series, including (but not limited to) Erika, Lisbeth, and Harriet.
- Good Is Not Nice: Less so than Lisbeth but he's willing to do what it takes to take down evil, even if it means breaking the law himself (which he does several times).
- Gracefully Demoted: He resigned in order to protect Millenium against reprisals from Wennerstrom, whether in term of ads (Wennerstrom could frighten clients into not buying ads in the newspaper) or in term of image, since a newspaper led by a convicted libeller might lose readers.
- Guile Hero: His whole thing is that he'll try to use words rather than violence to get out of a situation (usually because he's outclassed).
- Hero with Bad Publicity: Begins Dragon Tattoo as one, especially after Wennerström completely destroys him in that libel suit. He starts to slowly rebuild his reputation after finding Harriet Vagner and ''finally' making something stick to Wennerström.
- Intrepid Reporter: He runs Millennium and even when he can't, he'll be out investigating.
- Scars Are Forever: He has a scar that he got from being hung from a hook by Martin Vanger, which he doubts will ever fade.
- Supporting Protagonist: In the second and third books, he's the viewpoint character and the most active investigator and character, but the story is about Lisbeth and her past.
Lisbeth Salander
A 24-year-old hacker described as "a pale, androgynous young woman who has hair as short as a fuse, and a pierced nose and eyebrows". Extremely distrustful of authority (for very good reason, as it turns out), goes her own way and doesn't (seem to) care what others think of her. She has a photographic memory, extensive hacking skills and far more capacity for violence than most people expect of a 4-foot-11 flat-chested woman. She has multiple tattoos - a wasp on her neck, a tattooed loop around the bicep of her left arm and another one around her left ankle, a Chinese symbol on her hip, a rose on her left calf, and the eponymous dragon tattoo on her back, which runs from her shoulder down her spine and ends on her buttocks (changed in the English translation to be a small dragon on her left shoulder blade). She later gets the wasp tattoo removed, feeling it was "too obvious and made her too easily remembered and identifiable".
- A-Cup Angst: Lisbeth is a twenty-four-year-old woman with the bustline of a ten-year-old girl. She's not too thrilled with that. In Played With Fire, she solves this problem by getting a boob job.
- Affluent Ascetic: Earns a fortune from the Vanger case and then increases her money through careful investments but barely spends any of it.
- Anti-Hero: Type IV: she has a soft spot for victims of abuse, especially women, as well as for the few decent people in her life, but she is ruthless to abusers, especially abusers of women, especially her own.
- Ax-Crazy: At her worst, she will go straight for the kill with a firebomb, golf stick, or with a literal axe. Mind you, the latter was after her target failed to keep her dead and buried.
- Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Her room, which was the apartment where she first grew, is shown as messy as her life. Her new apartment in following books, however, is more tidy and cleaner, showing how much progress she made.
- Berserk Button: Lisbeth only has a few people she really cares about, but attacking one of them presses this. And if you abuse a woman or child and Lisbeth finds out about it, she'll do everything in her power to ruin your life.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: Lisbeth only attacks when provoked, but then she is merciless, from her school years when she would beat up bullies to a pulp, to her adulthood when she would sodomize her own rapist, brand him with a tattoo, and terrify him into silence.
- Big Eater: It's mentioned constantly that despite her tiny size, she seems to live solely off of massive amounts of junk food.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Lisbeth is the gray to basically every villain's black, given how unscrupulous her methods sometimes get and how much she basically jumps around whether or not she's within the lines of the law or not. Considering how pitch-black some of them are, even Lisbeth's Pay Evil unto Evil methods are very much justified, even if she's not towards the white side as people like Blomkvist or Annika.
- Brains and Bondage: She enjoys being tied up by her girlfriend during sex. According to her, it has nothing in common with her traumatic experience when she was tied down and raped by her legal guardian, since with Miriam it's Safe, Sane, and Consensual.
- Bondage Is Bad: The media has a field day with this, painting her as a sadistic Psycho Lesbian, no matter that Lisbeth plays the submissive. The irony is not lost on her.
- Broken Bird: First she witnessed her father abuse her mother, then tried to kill him for it by setting him on fire. Then she was thrown into a psychiatry clinic to be abused as part of a GovernmentConspiracy to cover up her father's crimes. Then she turned thirteen.
- Combat Pragmatist: When attacked by two burly men, she douses one in pepper spray, kicks the other in the groin and shoots him in the foot.
- Creepy Child: Lisbeth was teased and bullied in school for acting like one due to her abusive past.
- Dark and Troubled Past: "All The Evil." To wit: Lisbeth is the child of an Unperson, a Soviet defector nicknamed "Zala" whose very existence is classified by the Swedish Security Police. When Zala turned out to be a Domestic Abuser, the government did nothing — they could scarcely imprison someone didn't officially exist. Lisbeth took matters into her own hands... which led to her being imprisoned on trumped-up charges, declared victim of mental issues, and subjected to torture at the hands of a Psycho Psychologist — all to keep the Government Conspiracy going.
- Depraved Bisexual: Subverted. Her mental hangups have nothing to do with her sexuality, but when she's accused of triple murder, the media plays this trope for all its worth, labeling her a sadomasochistic lesbian satanist.
- Determinator: In general, she is capable of extreme focus when investigating something. Then there is her literally named "Terminator mode", an Unstoppable Rage state she enters when attacked. And then there's this up to eleven, when her father shoots her in the leg and head and has her buried alive, after which she digs herself out and immediately, with open wounds, returns to him and splits his skull with an axe, then continues to plot his murder for weeks while the two are lying a few rooms across from each other in hospital.
- Different as Night and Day: She has a twin sister, Camilla, but they never got along and Lisbeth hasn't seen her in years, nor does she want to.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Lisbeth has pale skin and dyes her hair black. She's also extremely disturbed and freaks people out even if she doesn't mean to.
- Extremely Protective Child: She protected her mother from her father's abuse. That lead her to throw a gasoline and a lighter to burn him alive as a desperate attempt to stop him for harming her mother further. That attack also lead her to be labeled as mentally incompetent thanks to her father's connections to the Swedish government while getting away from his domestic abuse and other criminal activities. That doesn't stop Lisbeth to get even against him and one of the ways to piss her off is to badmouth her (currently deceased) mother, which her father did during their confrontation at the second book.
- Fiery Redhead: Though she dyes it black, she has naturally red hair.
- Fragile Speedster: She is a trained kick boxer and her trainer remembers she's extremely quick both when attacking and dodging, because she's small and lithe.
- Freudian Excuse: Suffered for years at the hand of an abusive father, before being falsely labelled insane by his government friends for daring to fight back.
- Goth: Her style and disposition certainly fit the bill.
- Good Is Not Nice: Has a personality that might seem off-putting, but is overall a good person.
- Guile Hero : Lisbeth is an excellent manipulator, but ultimately on the side of good.
- Harmful to Minors: Lisbeth grew up watching her mother get constantly beaten by her father. It made an impression.
- Hates Being Touched: Due to a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse.
- I Am Not Pretty: Lisbeth is extremely averse to being considered attractive, but a lot of emphasis is still given to how thin and attractive she is underneath her mask.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Finds herself in this position several times, being forced to oral sex and anally raped later by Nils Bjurman.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: A variation: Mikael catches on that she hacked his computer because the report she wrote on him contained references to an article that didn't exist anywhere except on his personal system.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Calling her "anti-social" would be putting it mildly, but she is more-or-less a good person underneath it all. She tries her best to keep innocent people from getting caught up in her mess and she feels guilty when an old friend gets maligned in the press on account of being associated with her.
- Keeping the Handicap: A variation. After being tied up and raped by Bjurman, Lisbeth's wrist is injured from the rope. Although she knows it will fade, she elects to have it tattooed on her wrist as a reminder.
- Master of Disguise: She uses a fake personality under the name of "Irene Nesser" when she needs to disappear, donning a blonde wig and carrying herself like a pretentious city girl.
- Older Than They Look: She's in her mid-twenties, but often gets mistaken for a teenager.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Her modus operandi. To list: she leaves a serial rapist-murderer bleed and burn to death in his crashed car, beats to death a man who planned to dispose of his wife the same way to claim her inheritance, sodomizes her own rapist with the dildo he used on her, and tries to kill her own father after he failed to murder her.
- Playful Hacker / The Cracker: Somewhere in-between, as she mainly uses her skills to technically break the law in order to investigate, and expose or punish, serious corruption, but occasionally employs the same methods to avenge fairly petty slights. She also stole a few billion SEK from a financial swindler.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: A scrawny 150cm tall girl who's able to take on two thuggish men and even survive getting shot in the head and buried alive to crawl out of her own grave and put an axe in her would-be murderer (and father)'s skull.
- Photographic Memory: the first book reveals that she has one. It turns out to be a big part of her All of the Other Reindeer complex.
- Polar Opposite Twins: With her sister, Camilla - Lisbeth is asocial, aggressive, unfeminine, but has a soft spot for abused people, especially women, and those who help them, and otherwise just wants to be left alone. Camilla is revealed to be beautiful and using that to manipulate people, including her sister, and destroy lives for the pleasure of it.
- Private Detective: She was a researcher before teaming up with Mikael, and now she does that more literally.
- Psychotic Smirk: She likes to give these before she kicks ass.
- Rebellious Spirit: Even if she's not trying to overcome some sort of evil, she scorns rules.
- Really Gets Around: Been with 50 people since she was 15.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Very much so, almost to the point where she seems to prefer for there not to be any rules. See Sociopathic Hero.
- Sociopathic Hero: Thinks nothing of raping rapists, threatening corporations, or blackmailing people.
- Tough Spikes and Studs: Lisbeth is a trained kickboxer and is occasionally shown wearing a truly impressive leather choker with long spikes.
- Tranquil Fury: She never shows her anger, it just simmers inside.
- The Unfettered: Lisbeth operates by her own code, unhindered by society's norms. Justified, since she has seen just how rotten society can be. She also has no qualms about stealing a few billion bucks from a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- Unscrupulous Hero: She tends to take some cruel and unusual methods like torture and forced confinement to punish those she believes deserve it, and they often do.
- Vapor Wear: Most scenes in the movies where she's nude either begins with her taking her clothes off or ending with her putting them on. Never once is she shown to have any undergarments on during any of those scenes. It's especially clear when she's being undressed by her on-again/off-again girlfriend in the second movie.
- Somewhat justified, in that (initially) her breasts are small enough that she doesn't really need a bra.
- When She Smiles: Exhibit A
◊. You can practically see her heart warm up.
Erika Berger
Played by: Lena Endre (2009), Robin Wright (2011)
Editor and primary shareholder of Millennium. She and Blomkvist have worked together both professionally and personally for twenty years.
- Da Editor: In the good way. She supports Blomkvist in everything he does. We can see her nastier side when she starts working at SMP. Not surprising, considering the people she needs to work with.
- Double Standard: My Girl Is a Slut: Is Mikael's part-time lover. She reveals frustration that she, who is Happily Married and has permission from her husband to dally with Blomkvist, is still judged for her "infidelity" while he gets pats on the back.
- Ethical Slut: She believes that as long as no one gets hurt, she should be able to have sex with anyone she wants without people saying a word about it.
- Guile Hero: Even more so than Blomkvist as she doesn't his Jerk with a Heart of Gold tendencies, but she's very good with words (as it comes with being a newspaper editor).
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Millennium was founded with this as its modus operandi, and Erika is typically able to live up to it.
- Slut-Shaming: When she transfers from Millennium to Svenska Moronposten, she starts receiving anonymous hate mail with that content (as well as fake sexual harassment e-mails from her sent to a female coworker), as well as getting her home broken in and obscenities written on the wall and being under threat of her home-made porn getting leaked. Lisbeth helps her expose the culprit It turns out to be a coworker and former schoolmate who had a crush on her but she didn't even notice him because he was too shy to talk to her, and resents her for her popularity.
Henrik Vanger
Played by: Sven-Bertil Taube (2009), Julian Sands (Young) and Christopher Plummer (Old) (2011)
The former CEO of Vanger Industries, who hires Blomkvist to write a sort of authorized biography of his family. Of course, that's just the pretext: he actually wants Mikael to look into the forty-year-old cold case of his favorite grandniece Harriet's disappearance on 24 September 1966—36 years ago when the novel starts in 2002.
- Cool Old Guy: One of the only members of the family who isn’t a prick.
- Non-Idle Rich: he’s rich but he does do his best to help Mikael, and when he was younger he basically was the company.
- Retired Badass: Ran the company and left it in its current healthy state.
Martin Vanger
Played by: Peter Haber (2009), Stellan Skarsgård (2011)
The current CEO of Vanger Industries, he has little time to chat with Mikael because he's busy trying to keep the company afloat. There's more to him than meets the eye.
- Asshole Victim: He burns to death inside his car, but he's hard to pity considering he took pleasure on the rape and murder of so many women and got away with it for so long.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Appears to be the nicest and most peaceful Vanger, when he's actually one of the worst.
- Brother–Sister Incest: With Harriet, whom her father turned into his Sex Slave, and Martin continued the tradition.
- Depraved Bisexual: Only targeted women previously but is open to new things.
- Faux Affably Evil: States that this is one of his favourite tactics, letting his victims think he is reasonable before dashing their hopes.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Lisbeth tears down Mikael's attempts at pitying Martin, saying that even if it was his father Gottfried who taught him to be a killer, Martin was ultimately a disgusting woman-hater who chose to keep doing what he did.
- Hope Crusher: He says that he enjoys playing with his victims' hopes and seeing the look of disappointment in their faces when they realize he will show them no mercy.
- Karmic Death: In the movie, when Lisbeth leaves him to die, essentially denying him the mercy he denied all his victims.
- Legacy Character: Took over his father's Biblically-themed murders after his father died.
- Murderers Are Rapists: Reversed, as he states that he considers himself a rapist, but kills only to hide his crimes.
- The Nondescript: Seems bland at first sight, if friendly enough.
- Parental Incest: Gottfried raped him as well, which Martin saw as his duty.
- Serial Killer: He states murders were just a necessity, to hide his rapes.
- Serial Rapist: Martin abducts and rapes women regularly. He states he considers himself more a serial rapist than a killer, with the latter largely just being what he considers necessary to keep himself out of consequences for the rapes.
- The Sociopath: He keeps tapes of himself raping and murdering his victims, which is described as containing so much Cold-Blooded Torture that even Lisbeth is shaken by it.
- Villains Want Mercy: He begs Lisbeth for his life when he gets stuck inside his car, which is about to catch fire. Lisbeth has no pity for this rapist-murderer who enjoyed crushing his victims' hopes of mercy, so she lets him burn.
- Villain with Good Publicity: A highly respected CEO with an overall friendly demeanor, even liked by those who are deeply opposed to the Vangers such as Cecilia. And a serial rapist and a murderer.
- Übermensch: He believes himself one, claiming to Mikael that rapist-murderers like him live life to the fullest, getting off on the complete control over the life of his victims.
Gottfried Vanger
Henrik's nephew, and father to Harriet and Martin. He drowned when Harriet was 15.
- Abusive Parents: Had one in his Nazi father. Carried the tradition on to his own children. Martin turned out okay, Harriet not as much (what with the "dead" and all), though a lot of people expected the opposite to be true.
- Asshole Victim: Drowned in a lake by his raped daughter, no-one feels much sympathy.
- Devil in Plain Sight: The dude was known to have issues.
- The Fundamentalist: Part of his MO was Christian imagery.
- Karmic Death: Drowned by his daughter, who he raped.
- Nazi Nobleman: Like several in the Vanger clan, has a long and chequered history with Nazism.
- Parental Incest: Raped both Harriet and Martin.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He’s a Nazi, racist anti-semite and likely misogynist, which motivated his murders of several women.
- Posthumous Character: One of several in the Vanger clan.
- Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: Got up to these in his youth.
Harriet Vanger
Played by: Ewa Fröling (2009), Joely Richardson (2011)
The subject of Mikael's search, and (by sheer coincidence) his babysitter when he was about two and she thirteen or so. Every year she would give Uncle Henrik pressed flowers in a picture frame for his birthday; ever since she was killed, someone else—presumably the killer—has done the same. Relatives suspect that Henrik's curiosity over her fate is not entirely healthy.
- Faking the Dead: Smuggled herself away with the help of her cousin Anita. Is alive and well, and actually was sending the flowers to Henrik to reassure him of that fact.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Blomkvist's investigation reveals the activity of a Serial Killer, one who is believed to have killed her. He didn't.
- Posthumous Character: Subverted, as it turns out at the end that she is alive, but was hiding with a fake identity.
Peter Teleborian
- Laser-Guided Karma: Is taken down because he ultimately winds up believing his own lies about Lisbeth. As a result he underestimates her intelligence, leading to her exposing him as a pedophile.
- Smug Snake: His downfall comes as a result of overestimating his own competence and underestimating Lisbeth's intelligence.
- Villainous Breakdown: Experiences this after Gianinni rips him a new one in court.
"Zala"
A gang lord specializing in drugs and smuggling in underage Russian girls into Sweden for sex slavery. Of course, he also has other relevance: Under his full name, "Alexander Zalachenko," he's also Lisbeth's father.
- Archnemesis Dad: To Lisbeth.
- Berserk Button: Mentioning the name "Lisbeth Salander" to him guarantees a lot of fucked up shit will happen just so he can try and get revenge on her.
- Likewise, mentioning "Zala" to her will put her Spider-Sense on high alert.
- The Determinator: Must be In the Blood. He survives being set on fire and carves out a criminal empire, and after the second book when Lisbeth and he are put in hospital, in spite of his crippling injuries he still manages to drag himself out of bed to try and kill her.
- Evil Cripple: He's obviously evil and has a prosthetic foot, amputated when he was lit on fire and it got tangled in the seat belt when he tried to escape the car.
- Evil Makes You Ugly: Apparently he was a good-looking man in his youth, but after being lit on fire, he's a shriveled old wreck in the present days.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Bears many marks from when his daughter lit him on fire.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Is killed by his handlers after trying to double-cross them one time too many.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: He thinks he can do whatever he wants because there's an entire sector of the government designed to protect him and clean up whenever he gets himself into trouble.
- Smug Snake: He seems to think he's so important to the Swedish government that they won't dare to turn on him, instead cleaning up his mess as they always have. He fails to realize that he's essentially a washed up old has-been who hasn't been nearly the lynchpin he thinks he is since the Soviet Union fell and most of his knowledge became out of date, and more importantly, that everyone is tired of trying to cover for a man who won't stay out of trouble.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He hasn't been useful to the Swedish government in almost fifteen years, so the sector specifically designed to protect him decides they should just kill him instead of trying to cover up such the blatant mess he's gotten himself into.
Nils Bjurman
Played by: Peter Andersson (2009), Yorick van Wageningen (2011)
A lawyer and the legal guardian of Lisbeth Salander. He uses that position to abuse her, sexually and otherwise.
- Control Freak: Wants to control every aspect of Lisbeth's life.
- Hate Sink: Has no redeeming traits whatsoever.
- Mark of Shame: Following her rape by him, Lisbeth comes back at him, stuns him with a taser, ties him up, sodomizes him with a dildo and tattoos the words "I AM A SADISTIC PIG AND RAPIST" on his chest.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Uses his legal guardian position to sexually abuse Lisbeth and eventually rape her.
