Erika Berger

Erika Berger is a co-owner and editor-in-chief of Millennium and is in charge of their public relations. She is married to artist, Greger Beckman but has continuously been Mikael Blomkvist's lover since meeting in journalism school.

Origin
Little is known about Erika's origins other than she was born in Sweden and eventually grew up to become a journalist. At one point of her life she married Swedish painter Greger Beckman and met another journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, and together they created Millennium.

Relationship with Mikael
Upon creating Millennium and becoming a successful magazine firm in the 1980’s, Erika and Mikael formed a sexual and romantic relationship. The two dated for a few months before deciding to stay as friends and have continuous occasional flings. They both got serious relationships eventually with Mikael’s marriage ruined by the adultery while Erika’s husband Beckman did not mind the affair. The two would meet at night in various locations as in: Mikael's private home, hotels, and sometimes in the Millennium offices after hours. While married to Erika, Beckman discovered Erika's engagement with Mikael, presumably due to her constant ventures outsider their home and late night returns. Due to his love for his wife, Beckman did not express anger towards Erika nor did he disapprove. Thus caused Beckman to not care about his wife's affair with another man. The co-owners’ sexual relationship was private to the staff at Millennium but known to Beckman.

September 2002
Erika Berger is Mikael's on-off lover in the novel and is slightly annoyed with his relationship with Cecilia Vanger but is confided in what happened in Hedestad.

2003-2004
When two employees Millennium are murdered, Erika is in charge of overseeing the publishing of Johansson’s novel on sex trafficking and keeping the company from swaying until the novel is called off. She was neutral towards her attitude of Salander, having only met her once after hearing of her saving Mikael’s life. In late 2003, she was offered a high-paying job at the male-dominated newspaper Svenska Morgon Posten to help revive it. The job was extremely stressful for her.

She began getting stalked by one of her co-workers, they left e-mails calling her a Whore, framing inappropriate messages as from her, photoshopping her face on porn images, and eventually escalated it to a break-in at her home. The attacker threw a brick through a glass door, painted the word Whore in green spray paint on her back fence, and stole a box of confidential photos from her at the BDSM club Club X-Treme and teenage love-letters. Fearing for her safety, she hired Milton Security to install cameras and motion detectors on her home along with befriending her bodyguard. Erika learns of Lisbeth Salander’s access to the Internet through the hospital and asks her to find the man responsible for the sexual harassment. The perpetrator turned out to be a man named Peter who used to go to her school, claiming that she bullied him even though they never talked to each other.

She quit SMP and went back to Millennium.

Mikael gets in a relationship with Figuerola at the end of the novel whom wants them to be monogamous, leaving Erika to accept not having her best friend as a fling anymore.

Erika Berger