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Görel Hanser 1949–2026
photo Carl Hanser
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Stockholm
June 13th 2026
It is with the deepest sorrow that we announce the passing of Görel Hanser.
We have lost our most loved friend and closest colleague.
The loss is immeasurable.
We ask that you respect our privacy in this time of grief.
Agnetha Björn Benny Frida
”Det är med djupaste sorg som vi meddelar att Görel Hanser har gått bort. Vi har förlorat vår mest älskade vän och närmaste kollega. Förlusten är enorm. Vi ber att få vara i fred och att vår integritet respekteras i denna tid av sorg”, skriver de i ett uttalande som är undertecknat av Agnetha, Björn, Benny och Frida.
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the last Visit to ABBA Arena
video Svana Gisla
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”A kiss could be a manifestation of many things, like appreciation, admiration, love, respect, friendship or a celebration of many years of a wonderful collaboration! In this case it is all of the above, and the list of superlatives could go on forever! She has been in our lives even before ABBA was born, working with our late manager Stikkan, being the CEO of Polar Music for some years and then starting her independent services companies in the music business, taking care of us musicians in need of mothering care! Gorel is our anchor and mediator, with her calmness and strength shining through when we most need it!
Görel, we worship and love you xxx” - Anni-Frid Lyngstad
Görel, we worship and love you xxx” - Anni-Frid Lyngstad
text from ABBA Voyage Magazine
2023
The Official International ABBA Fan Club
40 Anniversary
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ABBA on Vinyl Chronology - Sång Till Görel
(ABBA and Stig Anderson)
Released June 1979
During Görel’s 30th birthday in June 1979, all four ABBA members and Stig Anderson wrote and recorded this very special song, which was pressed on blue vinyl. Between 50 and 250 copies were distributed to guests.
ABBA would do this once more for Stig Anderson’s 50th birthday celebrations in 1981. The original pressing can now reach over a £1000.
This record is the 2016 Collector’s Reissue.
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01 Apr 2024 - BBC Sounds
It's 50 years since Swedish pop group Abba won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest.
Abba's current manager, Görel Hanser, speaks to Matt Pintus
20240401
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct5ygj
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photo Official ABBA Fan Club
Question & Answer session with Görel Hanser (ABBA's spokesperson) and Mia Segolsson (label manager, Polar Music). May 2018.
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VOYAGE
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I'm totally shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of Görel Hanser. A truly generous, sincere and lovely lady. During the writing of my latest ABBA book, I was communicating with Görel regularly via email, who had expressed to me, her support of the writing of my book and that I also had the blessing of both Benny and Björn. I kept her updated with the book's progress. She even kindly forwarded some interview questions to Björn to answer for me for my book, which Björn kindly answered. When the book was completed, she mentioned to me that the next time I was in Stockholm, to let her know. So when I was in Stockholm back in April this year to tour in support of my book, she invited me to meet her at Mono Music office one afternoon. She answered the door with a huge smile and a very warm welcome. Though it was a brief visit, we chatted for awhile, and then she thanked me for the support of ABBA and for writing my book. I in turn, thanked her for your wonderful support and for ABBA's music which has soundtracked my life. When it came time to take a photo with her, she graciously suggested I take a photo with her holding my book as she said, 'ABBA fans can be made aware of it'. It meant a lot to me to have her stamp of approval. I will cherish the memory. R.I.P Görel.
Gorel Hanser obituary: manager of Abba for decades
Key figure in the Abba story who accompanied the group around the world and had a song written for her dies aged 76
Gorel Hanser and ABBA member Anni-Frid Lyngstad laughing together.
• 7:09 min
When Gorel Hanser’s daughter was a young girl, she was asked by her school teacher what her parents did for a living. “My mother works for two men with beards,” she replied. There was much tittering among her classmates, although the mirth might have turned to admiration if she had identified the hirsute duo as the Abba songwriters Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, who together with Agnetha Faltskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad sold an estimated 400 million records.
Hanser had begun working with them in 1969 — at which time only Andersson was bearded — when she was employed as a lowly secretary at the Swedish record company Polar Music and the song publishers Sweden Music. Both were owned by Stig “Stikkan” Anderson, who at the time was also employing the unknown Ulvaeus and Andersson as in-house songwriters and producers.
By 1972 they had formed Abba with Faltskog, who had married Ulvaeus, and Lyngstad, the wife of Andersson. Hanser, meanwhile, had become Stig Anderson’s personal secretary and her formidable organisational skills meant that she was to become a key figure in the Abba story.
Organising press and promotions and accompanying the group around the world, she rose to become vice-president of Polar Music and made herself indispensable as Abba’s personal manager, so much so that in 1979, a few years before the group broke up, they wrote and recorded a song in her honour, Sang Till Gorel, as a gift for her 30th birthday.
With a lyric in Swedish that roughly translated as “Where is Gorel? We can’t manage anything without you!”, the record was a tribute to her indispensability. Pressed as a 12-inch single in blue vinyl, only 50 copies were manufactured and to prevent bootlegged copies, it was not permitted to be played on the radio, making it the most collectible item in Abba’s discography, fetching thousands of dollars whenever a rare copy has come up at auction.
After the group split up in 1982, Hanser continued to work for Ulvaeus and Andersson, managing their continuing interests in Abba’s lucrative back catalogue. “Like they grew together they also grew apart,” she said. “They didn’t say it was the end of Abba. They said let’s take a pause and do other things. We were waiting for them to get together again.”
It took almost 20 years for the reunion to happen and when it did it was a one-off private performance at her 50th birthday party in 1999. “They were invited but I didn’t know they were going to sing a song for me,” she recalled. “They rehearsed secretly in the bathroom and it was a big surprise.” The performance was in front of no more than 150 guests and just how privileged they had been was evident a year later when Abba were offered $1 billion by a British-American consortium to reform for a 100-show world tour.
It was Hanser who put the deal to the group’s former members — and then had to inform the would-be promoters that their offer had been turned down. “It’s hard to believe,” she conceded. “They talked about it but it wasn’t something you could persuade them to do. They didn’t want to go on tour again. It wasn’t a question of money, which was never the drive for them. The drive was always to write and record good songs.”
Eventually in 2018 the former members went back into the studio together for the first time in 44 years and it was Hanser who broke the news to the world that Abba were singing together again. “It was very moving and we were all of us nearly crying,” she said. “But within minutes it was back to the old days. Everyone knew what to do. No hard feelings, no stress … it was magical.”
The result was the album Voyager, eventually released in 2021, and the launch of the Abba Voyage avatar project, which opened the following year at a custom-built venue in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, featuring a ten-piece live band backing digital avatars of the four band members in their hit-making prime. By then Hanser had been working with them for more than half a century, leading the group’s official fan club to call her Abba’s “fifth member”.
She is survived by her son, Colle, and daughter, Carolina, from her marriage to Anders Hanser, a broadcaster, journalist and photographer. They met in 1978 when he visited Polar Music’s offices hoping to persuade Abba to take part in a radio series. The group turned him down but their label’s vice-president did not and they married two years later. He subsequently became Abba’s photographer of choice and more than 500 of his photos of them were collected in the 1999 book From Abba To Mamma Mia!
Gorel Kristina Johnsen was born in 1949 in Skovde, a university town 200 miles southwest of Stockholm. When she joined Polar Music as a secretary at the age of 20, she saw the job as a stopgap until she could train to become a teacher.
Early on she came close to being fired by Stikkan Anderson, who was a successful pop songwriter in his own right. After he had dictated some lyrics he had written for the Swedish singing star Siw Malmkvist to her, he received an angry call from the studio where the song was being recorded, complaining that the words made no sense, were impossible to sing and that his songwriting smarts had clearly deserted him. She had muddled the words he had dictated and, by her own account, was lucky to escape with a reprimand.
At the time Polar Music was still a tiny company and as it became clear that her organisational abilities were superior to her merits as a typist, she soon graduated from dictation to handling press inquiries, record label deals and any other practical matters that were required after Abba formally launched as a recording act with their debut single People Need Love in 1972. Yet nothing could prepare her for the outbreak of Abbamania as the group shot to international fame after Waterloo won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974.
She wasn’t with Abba in Brighton to witness their victory in person and was back in the office in Stockholm plotting how to promote the record to an audience beyond their existing Swedish fan base. But for the next six years she accompanied the group as they toured the world in the eye of a whirlwind and topped charts with a string of dazzling hits, including SOS, Mamma Mia, Dancing Queen, Money Money Money, Knowing Me Knowing You and The Name of the Game.
“When we were in the midst of it, you didn’t really grasp just how big it was,” she recalled. “Sure, we drank champagne when Abba was topping a chart, but we had to keep on working as usual. It wasn’t until after it was over that you actually could take in what a fantastic journey we had.”
Gorel Hanser, Abba manager, was born on June 1, 1949. She died of undisclosed causes on June 13, 2026, aged 76
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