His parents were crofters (tenant farmers) on an estate known as Hällby, Tillberga parish, in the Swedish province of Västmanland.

At seventeen, Larson wanted to go to Brazil, but was prevented from this by his sister Edla, who told him that he must wait until he had turned 21 and was of age to pursue such adventures.

Larson began work as a carpenter on his brother-in-law's building projects in order to qualify for architecture studies in Stockholm.

When he had learned enough to get by on his own, he made his way northward to Urga (modern day Ulaanbaatar) in order to refine his new language skills.

Kalgan lies about 230 kilometres (140 miles) northwest of Beijing, and was an important junction for caravan traffic westward to Xinjiang and northward to Mongolia and Russia.

Another guest in the Larson household was future American President Herbert Hoover, an engineer surveying a railroad route between Beijing and the Mongolian border.

The Boxer Rebellion, which broke out in China in the year 1900, was a hunt for foreigners- foreign influences in general, and missionaries and Christian converts in specific.

With a loaded rifle always at the ready, Larson managed to save himself, his wife and two small daughters, and about 20 Swedish and American missionaries, and got the party to Siberia.

Larson had about twenty camels, fifteen horses and several draft oxen at pasture north of Kalgan.

To get back on his feet financially Larson began working as an interpreter and foreman at a newly opened gold mine near the city of Kyakhta on the border of Mongolia and Siberia.

After four months, he had earned enough for the family to take the Trans-Siberian Railway to Finland and to then travel via Sweden and by boat to the USA and his wife's hometown of Albany, New York.

A rich American had lent him 200 dollars for the trip, and he had twelve cents left when he walked into the gold mine offices in Kyakhta.

He became the friend of princes, nobility and Buddhist lamas, including Bogdo Gegen, The Living Buddha of Urga.

In 1923, he was hired by Roy Chapman Andrews, the famous paleontologist who hunted for dinosaur remains in the Gobi desert.

In thanks, Larson was made an honorary member of the board of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Larson was responsible for logistics, which included such tasks as obtaining 300 camels, 26 Mongolian tents, and a year's worth of supplies for 65 persons.

[4] During a visit to Sweden in 1929, Larson met the great Swedish industrialist Ivar Kreuger, "The Match King", and suggested that he make investments in China.

Larson began planning a gigantic railway project which would connect Nanjing with Urumqi in Xinjiang, and with Novosibirsk in Russia.

Krueger would provide the financing in exchange for monopolies on the safety match markets in north and central China.

Larson had just gotten the Chinese government to agree to the idea when a newswire came from Paris: Ivar Krueger was dead!

When Larson was forced to flee from the Japanese advances in 1939, he lost huge portions of his ownings for the second time.

He headed to California, where he was reunited with his wife and his now-grown children, and continued on to Sweden, where he had purchased a mink farm together with a relative.

Back in North America, he lived on Vancouver Island in Canada for eight months, helping a newly-immigrated Swedish couple get started.