She was born in Ytterby to Kristina Karlsson and her husband Karl August, who worked as farmers with a secondary income from fishing.
[1] Because of the need to help on the farm, Lena had little education, but her whole family were singers, and her younger brother recorded some of the lyrics of her songs and sent them to an archive.
After her husband's death in 1956, she continued to run his small farm and also brought up the children of one of her younger sisters, who had died.
In 1957, Lena Larsson made her first recordings, encouraged by Ulf Peder Olrog, who became the founder of Swedish Radio’s folk music collection.
[2] Larsson's voice on the recordings is described as "dark and low, her tempo slow", and her performance as "meditative rather than extrovert".