Lena Källersjö, known in English-language press as Lena Kallersjo, was the Swedish music journalist and former wife of ABBA co-founder Björn Ulvaeus. She died on 7 January 2026, aged 76. Her death was confirmed by Björn’s long-standing agent Görel Hanser, who spoke to Swedish newspaper Expressen and to Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Germany’s national newswire. No official cause of death was given. She had lived with an incurable form of blood cancer since 2003.
For 41 years she kept a deliberately low profile inside one of the most famous stories in pop music history, standing close to it while saying almost nothing about it publicly.
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Who Was Lena Källersjö?
Born in Sweden in 1949, she was working at a Stockholm advertising agency when she first met Björn Ulvaeus on New Year’s Eve 1978. The music journalism and television presenting she later became associated with came after she entered his life, not before.
She was never part of ABBA. She did not seek a public profile and spent four decades ensuring she did not have one. She attended Mamma Mia! premieres and stood at Björn’s side at major ABBA events, but she gave almost no press interviews and attracted almost no press attention of her own.
In 41 years of marriage to the co-founder of one of the best-selling acts in music history, she gave one substantial public interview. It was in 2005, to Expressen, and it was about her cancer.
Christmas 1978: How She Met Björn
The full story of how Lena came into Björn’s life has rarely been told properly in English.
On Christmas Day 1978, Agnetha Fältskog, Björn’s ABBA bandmate and wife of seven years, moved out of the home they shared in Stockholm. She relocated to a villa on Lidingö island with their two children, Linda and Peter. Björn filed for divorce in January 1979. The courts did not finalise it until July 1980.
One week after that Christmas Day separation, on New Year’s Eve 1978, Björn attended a party at the Stockholm home of Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Lena was there. Within days, they were living together.
Björn told The Telegraph about it years later:
“I had only been single for a week when I met Lena. We started living together straight away. I discovered that love comes easier when you have already lived with somebody. When Agnetha and I separated, I knew immediately that I would fall in love again. I knew immediately that I wasn’t cut out for a bachelor’s life.”
They married on 6 January 1981, six months after the Agnetha divorce was formally declared by the courts.
The Silent Presence Behind The Winner Takes It All
One detail almost never mentioned in coverage of her life: Lena was already living with Björn when he wrote, recorded and filmed the song.
Its original working title was The Story of My Life. Björn wrote The Winner Takes It All about the emotional end of his marriage to Agnetha. It was released on 21 July 1980, and its music video, directed by Lasse Hallström, was filmed on Marstrand island off Sweden’s west coast exactly ten days after the divorce was formally declared in court. Agnetha sang it. Björn wrote every word of it. Lena was at home.
Agnetha later called it her favourite ABBA song. Björn said: “Neither Agnetha nor I were winners in our divorce.” The two of them stood in front of cameras for the most personal thing ABBA ever put on record while Björn was already months into the relationship that would become his second marriage.
Throughout that entire period, Lena gave no interviews, made no public statements, and sought no press coverage of any kind. She held that same position for the four decades that followed.
Two Daughters and a Life Away From the Cameras
Björn and Lena had two daughters together. Emma Eleonora Ulvaeus was born on 3 January 1982. Anna Linnea Ulvaeus was born on 29 April 1986.
Between 1984 and 1990 the family lived in England, where Björn co-founded an IT company with his brother. After returning to Sweden they settled on a private island in Djursholm, a district of Danderyd Municipality north of Stockholm and one of the wealthiest residential communities in Scandinavia. They also kept a summer home on Värmdö island off the Swedish coast.
The Diagnosis: Danderyds Hospital, 2003
In 2003, Lena noticed four hazelnut-sized lumps on her neck. She had also been experiencing heavy night sweats, which she had put down to menopause. Her first GP test came back clear. She pushed for a referral to Danderyds Hospital in Stockholm for a bone marrow test.
When the hospital called and asked her to come in as soon as possible, she told Björn it did not sound like good news. Both of them were in the consultation room when the diagnosis was confirmed: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia, incurable.
Her doctors described the specific variant as slow-growing and non-aggressive. They could not give a precise timeline. She could deteriorate in six months. She might be living with it for twelve years.
She lived 23 years after that appointment.
Cancer Research UK puts the five-year survival rate for CLL at approximately 87 to 88 per cent. Living two decades past diagnosis without aggressive treatment sits well outside what clinical projections typically cover.
In her 2005 Expressen interview, the only time she ever spoke publicly about her illness, she described the moment the diagnosis was delivered:
“We fell apart, both Björn and I. We just held each other. After we walked out of there, it was as if we were out of it. It has been a long process to deal with the information. At first I could not believe it was true. Then I lay there in despair. I could not sleep and thought about dying.”
The Choice She Made After the Diagnosis
After the initial period she made a deliberate decision about how she would manage the illness day to day. She stopped attending routine monthly hospital check-ups. In that same 2005 interview she explained why:
“You sit there in the waiting room like a scared rabbit and wait to hear how sick you are. It feels much better not having to deal with those damn blood tests. I’ll go to the hospital when I get ill.”
Björn spoke about the diagnosis separately, in an interview with Swedish publication Hälsoliv:
“It’s terrible. We live with the disease. I think about it every day. And that you can’t do anything about it. The doctors can’t say how long she has left. Lena can fall ill and die in six months, or in twelve years.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, Björn told Dagens Nyheter that Lena wore rubber gloves and a face mask on every shopping trip because of her weakened immune system, and that family visits were confined to the porch of their Djursholm home.
The illness shifted how she thought about ordinary life. From the same 2005 Expressen interview:
“You become different as a person when you have a limited time left. You can’t be mean towards anyone. You probably become kinder and more truthful.”
The End of a 41-Year Marriage
In February 2022, Björn and Lena announced their separation. Their joint statement read: “After many wonderful and eventful years, we have decided to go our separate ways. We remain close friends and will continue to celebrate our grandchildren’s birthdays and other family holidays together.”
The announcement came a few months after ABBA released Voyage, their first studio album in 40 years, and shortly after Björn had reconnected creatively with Agnetha Fältskog for the first time in nearly four decades.
In Sweden, post-nuptial agreements are public records. A post-nuptial agreement Björn and Lena had signed in 2013 was published by Aftonbladet, one of the country’s largest newspapers, after the separation was announced. It covered joint assets of around £100 million, to be divided equally. Their Djursholm villa was valued at approximately £44 million. The Värmdö summer home was worth around £10 million. Shared artworks, seven vehicles, and a joint bank account carrying a minimum balance of approximately £16 million were all part of the agreement. Björn’s separate business holdings, which included hotel properties in Sweden and the ABBA Museum building in Stockholm, were not included.
“I Think of Her Often”: Björn’s Words After Her Death
No statement came from Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson, or Anni-Frid Lyngstad. Björn spoke to Expressen.
He had married Christina Sas, a Danish music industry executive, in September 2024 in Copenhagen, in a ceremony officiated by broadcaster Sandi Toksvig. He had described Sas on Swedish television as his “third great love”, a phrase that placed Lena as the second great love of his life after Agnetha. When Expressen reached him after Lena’s death, he said:
“I miss her very much. It is very sad that she has died. I think of her often even though we divorced four years ago. And I think of our children Emma and Anna in this time of sorrow.”
The 2005 Expressen interview remains the only real record of her in her own words. Near the end of that interview she said:
“The worst thing is to wake up at three in the morning and start thinking about how much time I have left. I’m happily married. It is so sad to know that we won’t grow old together.”
She said that in 2005. She and Björn divorced seventeen years later. She died on 7 January 2026, having outlived the worst-case projection from Danderyds Hospital by more than a decade.
