"He had drunk more coffee during the past twenty-four hours than at any time in his life, but by now he had learned that in Norrland it was rude to say no." (p. 399)

Coffee is referenced a great amount of times in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Mikael and Lisbeth seem to always be drinking a cup wherever they are at most points in the book. Part of this may be personal taste ad a strong liking for the drink. When taking a structuralist approach to this mass coffee consumption though, you may find that it might not just be them.

As you can see, all of Scandinavia ranks in the top ten coffee consumption per capita in the world. Sweden comes in ranked at sixth. Now you may be saying, "But it is so cold that far north!" or, "They have less sunlight, especially in the winter, so they need it to stay awake!". The answer though has to do with a difference in culture. Americans are used to a fast paced lifestyle where everything has to be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. In Sweden, things are much more relaxed and less intense. Swedes have a coffee drinking tradition known as fika. Fika occurs at least once a day for most people and is meant to bring family and friends together to bond. Usually coffee is served, sometimes tea, along with some sort of sweet.

In the book, Blomkvist and Salander usually drink much more than one cup per day and seem to prefer open-faced sandwiches to sweets. Opposed to getting it to go in a paper cup with a plastic lid and running off to somewhere, they tend to always be sitting down somewhere; whether it be at a cafe, at the kitchen table, or in the garden in back of the cottage. Coffee seems to also be a direct reflection of their culture as a whole. Whenever something serious or disturbing happens, you can almost bet that one of them is going to say that they are going to put a pot of coffee on. It is a relaxing thing and it reflects on the lifestyle of Swedish people, as they tend to work to live and not live to work.