Swedish actor confirmed dead in house fire

The remains found in Swedish Millennium trilogy actor Per Oscarsson's burned home have now been identified. It is now clear that it was the actor and his wife who died in a fire on New Year's Eve.

• Remains found at site of Swedish actor's home (3 Jan 11)
• Swedish actor feared dead in house fire (1 Jan 11)

The remains found in Per Oscarsson's burnt-down houses have now been identified. It is now clear that it was the actor and his wife who died in the fire of the night for New Year's Eve.

"The identification was completed today and it was made using dental records," police spokesman Ulf Edberg said on Wednesday.

The cause of the fire remains unclear.

Oscarsson, 83, and his wife Kia Östling, 67, were both believed to have been home when their isolated home near Skara in western Sweden burned to the ground overnight on Thursday.

On Sunday, Jan Strannegård, a police spokesman in Västra Götaland told AFP that no one had heard from the couple since the fire.

Due to the heat, police technicians had to wait until Saturday to begin sifting through the ashes in search of the couple. At around noon on Sunday, they discovered the remains of one person.

Oscarsson is a beloved actor in Sweden and has appeared in theatre, film, television and popular children's works.

He won the best actor prize at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival for his role as Pontus in Danish director Henning Carlsen's "Hunger" (Sult), an adaptation of Norwegian Nobel Literature winner Knut Hamsun's novel.

Oscarsson also portrayed Holger Palmgren in the Millennium film trilogy, the legal guardian of heroine Lisbeth Salander.

The deaths of Oscarsson and his wife echo the circumstances surrounding the accident that claimed the life of acclaimed Swedish jazz singer Monica Zetterlund several years earlier.

Zetterlund, who had retired from performing in 1999 due to her severe scoliosis, died in an accidental fire in her Stockholm apartment in May 2005.