Chapter 1 of Part 1 Incentive

Chapter 1 Friday, December 20.

Mikael Blomkvist from the Movie. 

Chapter 1 begins in Stockholm, Sweden as "Kalle" Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and part owner and publisher of an investigative magazine named Millennium, steps out onto the courthouse steps after being convicted of libel. Someone among a crowd of his peers calls him "Kalle," and Mikael is forced to recall his entrance many years ago into the world of journalism. He stands on the steps, answering the reporters' questions tersely, and thinks back on the day when he discovered a band of bank robbers as a youth. During the flutter of media attention that surrounded him following the police capture of the robbers, one of the reporters covering the story dubbed him "Kalle," after a child detective from the books of Astrid Lindgren, an esteemed Swedish author of children's literature. Although Blomkvist has always hated the nickname, he refuses to lose his cool in front of the reporters. After taking a few questions, he leaves.

Blomkvist takes a bus to a quiet café where he contemplates his court fines and his sentence of 90 days in jail. During the trial, he felt calm, but now he's overcome with a sense of doom. He knows that once he finishes his jail sentence, he'll have a hard time finding work because no editor would easily trust him again. At this point, Blomkvist begins to wonder how he ended up in this whole mess in the first place.

Returning to the time when Blomkvist first became interested in Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, the CEO who brought the libel case against Blomkvist when Blomkvist reported on Wennerstrom's questionable business activities, author Stieg Larsson employs a space break to indicate a flashback — a technique he uses throughout the novel to show a shift in time or focus. The Wennerstrom affair began a year and a half before the trial, on a summer afternoon. While out sailing with a few friends, Blomkvist is surprised to see Robban Lindberg in the boat that is docking next to his on the island of Arholma. Blomkvist hadn't seen Lindberg for years, although they were good pals in college. The two decide to hang out in Blomkvist's boat for the evening, drinking and discussing business ethics. The topic stirs interest within both of them, because Lindberg works as a high-end banker and Blomkvist often writes about corporate corruption.

Lindberg quickly steers the conversation to the topic of Wennerstrom. The banker relates an elaborate tale of potential fraud on the part of Wennerstrom and his investment company. Wennerstrom's company received 60 million kronor from the Swedish government to open a packaging factory in Poland. The factory, named Minos, remained open for two years and then quietly fell apart. Wennerstrom's company returned 6 million kronor of the original 60 million kronor loan, which the government accepted without question and the matter seemed to be over. Lindberg explains that he was one of the bankers reviewing the documentation and that although he couldn't find anything wrong with the paperwork, something felt odd to him.

Lindberg continues his story, saying that several years after the Wennerstrom's Minos operation collapsed, Lindberg happened to be in Poland and discovered that Minos was never the factory that was represented on paper. Through conversations with locals in Lodz, the city near which the factory was built, Lindberg discovers that Minos rarely had enough materials to produce anything. Blomkvist is confused why Wennerstrom, a businessman for whom 60 million kronor was a meager sum, would attempt such an obvious fraud for such a small amount. Lindberg reminds him of what the financial world was like in the early 1990s, stating that interest rates were high so loans were hard to come by. Therefore, Wennerstrom saw the loan from the Swedish government as easy cash to finance his company. Lindberg ends his tale by inviting Blomkvist to use him as an anonymous source if he chooses to pursue an investigation into Wennerstrom's financial dealings.