Trenter, Stieg

Stieg Ivar Trenter, born Stig Ivar Johansson, grew up in Farsta, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. His father owned a general store. Although he did well, Trenter was never happy at school, and after graduating in 1931 he tried various professions such as office boy and working in an abattoir. He wanted to become an aviator, and he joined the air force, but he soon lost interest and he left after only a year. During this period he wrote short stories. The first, Silverkorset, was printed in Lektyr magazine in 1934 under the pseudonym Stieg Seldner and the following year he signed up with Svenska Morgonbladet as a war correspondent in Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia). As a teenager, he had begun to spell his first name "Stieg", and when he joined Stockholms-Tidningen in 1936 he was asked to change his surname to Trenter since there were too many Johanssons in the office. Trenter was an avid reader of crime fiction, and found inspiration in E.C. Bentley’s novel Trent’s Last Case. He moved on to Liv magazine in 1938, and in 1939 he was called up for military service.