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Bamse – Världens starkaste och snällaste björn ("The world's strongest and kindest bear") is a Swedish fictional cartoon character created by Rune Andréasson. The highly popular children's cartoon first emerged as a series of television short films, the first in 1966, before being published periodically in its own comic magazine since 1973.
Characters and setting
The name Bamse, comes from a Scandinavian word, meaning "bear" or "teddybear", but also "giant" (which is something of a misnomer, since Bamse is rather diminutive in size compared to many of the other characters). Bamse, the main character, is a brown bear who gains super strength by eating a batch of honey called dunderhonung ("thunder honey"), specially prepared for him by his grandmother. Most other people will only get a three days' long stomach-ache from eating it.
Bamse's best friends are Lille Skutt ("Little Hop"), a very fast but notoriously frightened white rabbit, and Skalman ("Shellman"), an ingenious tortoise who invents all sorts of machines, including spacecraft and time machines, and stores just about anything in his carapace. According to himself, Skalman's best invention is the food-and-sleep clock, whose calls he follows slavishly, even at times when sleep seems highly inappropriate. To this date, he has only ignored the alarm call a few times, including the discovery of a dragon's egg, the birth of Bamse's children, and a state of deep depression (due to the (false) belief that his carelessness had caused the death of Bamse's children). Skalman seems to be a polyphasic sleeper and is sometimes seen playing chess with himself.
Moral values and criticism
The magazine takes an effort at being educational, and has indeed been a teacher of a generation of Swedes. On special "school" pages, the characters tell about animals, foreign cultures, the Universe, and other subjects. They often deal with superstition, and Skalman's skeptical views ("I only believe what I know") wins over those of his more naive friends. On the other hand, beings like trolls, tomtar and dragons exist on a very real plane in many of the stories.
Bamse and his friends are very clear about their values. They are strongly opposed to racism, bullying and violence. Bamse is not only the strongest bear in the world, but also the kindest, often repeating his slogan "Nobody becomes better by being beaten". The original villain, a black wolf simply called Vargen ("The Wolf"), became a friend of Bamse after consistently being treated kindly. (He occasionally falls back into crimes though, and Lille Skutt never trusts him.) The only villain that is depicted as unhelpable is Krösus Sork ("Croesus Vole"), a crude capitalist who will do practically anything for money. This, together with the overall focus on sharing and some of the "school" pages making pro-Chinese and Vietnam statements, has led some people to the conclusion that the series promotes communism. The quarrel reached its climax as Sweden's former prime minister Carl Bildt (liberal-conservative party) handed over a tie with the popular bear on a visit to the White House during Bill Clinton's presidency.
The series somewhat changed direction when Bamse had children, specifically triplets, in 1982. In 1986, he had a fourth child, Lille Skutt having one at the same time. (Skalman remains single, though.) Much focus now lies on the family life, and here also the basic values shine through, like that of sex equality. In 1989 Skalman noticed that Bamse's forth child ("Brumma") was intellectually handicapped, this once again brought up the aspect of equality. The children did develop in real-time (within the magazine), but seem to have been fixed in age since Andréasson left the magazine, a process that began in 1990. They are now around seven years old, in a narratively advantageous eternal state as first-graders.
Miscellaneous
In 1998, the themepark Bamses Värld ("Bamse's World") started as an attraction at the Kolmården Zoo.
In 1993, LaserBeam/Beam International published a Game Boy game, loosely based on the Bamse characters. The game received generally poor reviews, and was mostly considered a blatant Wonder Boy ripoff. The game hasn't been officially released outside Sweden.
Allegedly, there were a few translations of the series "Bamse's skola" in the 1960s, where the characters were given English names:
- "Bamse" - "Bamsy"
- "Skalman" - "Professor Shellback"
- "Lille Skutt" - "Little Frisky"
- "Katten Janson" - "Sooty Johnson"
In this translation the dunderhonung was given the name "magic honey", in the 1980s though, Andréasson did refer to it in as "thunder honey" in English (which is the literal translation).
Bamse should not be confused with the other bear of the same name that appears on Danish television (Bamses Billedbog, Bamse og Kylling).
External links
- Bamse - Official site
- Bamses Värld - Official site
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"Bamse"