“No need to be sarcastic. Those were different times. At any rate—Gottfried’s
brother, Birger Vanger, had three sons: Johan, Fredrik, and Gideon Vanger. They
were all born towards the end of the nineteenth century. We can ignore Gideon; he
sold his shares and emigrated to America. There is still a branch of the family over
there. But Johan and Fredrik Vanger made the company the modern Vanger
Corporation.”
Vanger took out a photograph album and showed Blomkvist pictures from the
gallery of characters as he talked. The photographs from the early 1900s showed
two men with sturdy chins and plastered-down hair who stared into the camera
lens without a hint of a smile.
“Johan Vanger was the genius of the family. He trained as an engineer, and he
developed the manufacturing industry with several new inventions, which he
patented. Steel and iron became the basis of the firm, but the business also
expanded into other areas, including textiles. Johan Vanger died in 1956 and had
three daughters: Sofia, Märit, and Ingrid, who were the first women automatically
to win admittance to the company’s shareholders’ meetings.
“The other brother, Fredrik Vanger, was my father. He was a businessman and
industry leader who transformed Johan’s inventions into income. My father lived
until 1964. He was active in company management right up until his death,
although he had turned over daily operations to me in the fifties.
“It was exactly like the preceding generation—but in reverse. Johan had only
daughters.” Vanger showed Blomkvist pictures of big-busted women with wide-
brimmed hats and carrying parasols. “And Fredrik—my father—had only sons. We
were five brothers: Richard, Harald, Greger, Gustav, and myself.”
Blomkvist had drawn up a family tree on several sheets of A4 paper taped together.
He underlined the names of all those on Hedeby Island for the family meeting in
1966 and thus, at least theoretically, who could have had something to do with
Harriet Vanger’s disappearance.
He left out children under the age of twelve—he had to draw the line somewhere.
After some pondering, he also left out Henrik Vanger. If the patriarch had had
anything to do with the disappearance of his brother’s granddaughter, his actions
over the past thirty-six years would fall into the psychopathic arena. Vanger’s