(This blog entry is dedicated to the sweetest nephew in the whole world – he visited Bamses World last summer with his parents and older sister, so don’t you tell HIM that Bamse isn’t REAL, because he was THERE!!!)

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[youtube width="425" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfGTMcTu0iI[/youtube]

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 as well as a weekly half page “Sunday strip” in 1966, before being published periodically in its own comic magazine since 1973.

Andréasson did all the artwork himself until 1975 and wrote all comics until 1990. Francisco Tora did all the illustrations between 1976 until he was joined by Bo Michanek in 1983. In the early 1990s, several new illustrators were hired, including Claes Reimerthi and Tony Cronstam. Andréasson continued to do the magazine cover illustrations until 1992.

Both the early Sunday strips and the early magazines have today been reprinted as glossy hard-bound volumes.

The name Bamse, comes from a Scandinavian word, meaning “bear” or “teddybear”, but also “huge”/”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 (lit. “thunder honey” or “rumble honey”), specially prepared for him by his grandmother. Most other people, with only a couple of exceptions, will only get a three-day stomach-ache from eating it. One of Bamse’s daughters will get both the strength and the stomach-ache.

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 (except for a locomotive and an atlantic steamboat, he claims). Skalman seems to be a polyphasic sleeper, and according to himself, his 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 dinosaur’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). None of the other characters come close to Skalman’s intellectual level and he is sometimes seen playing chess with himself (he has met, and won, over the chess world champion).

The magazine has educational aims, and has indeed been a teacher of a generation of Swedes. On special “school” pages, the characters educate the reader 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 is the better for being beaten”.

The original villain, a black wolf simply called Vargen (“The Wolf”), became a friend of Bamse after consistently being treated kindly. (Vargen occasionally falls back into crime, and Lille Skutt never trusts him.)

The only villain that is depicted as unredeemable 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 accuse the series of promoting 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 (of course he first married “Brumma”), specifically triplets (“Brum”, “Nalle-Maja” and “Teddy”), in 1982.

In 1986, he had a fourth child, Lille Skutt having one at the same time. (Lille Skutt married “Nina Kanin” and got a son named “Mini-Hopp”. Skalman remains single, though.) Family life is now in focus, and here also the basic values shine through, like that of gender equality. In 1989 Skalman noticed that Bamse’s fourth child (“Brumma”) was intellectually handicapped, which again brought up the subject of equality.

The children did develop in real-time (within the magazine), but seem to have been fixed in age since around 1990. The triplets are now around seven years old, in a narratively advantageous eternal state as first-graders.

Rune Andréasson retired in 1990 and new writers and illustrators had to be recruited. Up until this time he had written virtually all the content himself, although he did have help from other illustrators. He continued to illustrate the covers for some time after his retirement.

Rune Andréasson passed away on December 15th, 1999

A number of animated black and white short films were produced for television in 1966. In the early 1970s, seven more animated shorts were made, in color. The later color films have aired frequently on TV in Sweden and have been released on VHS and DVD. The black and white films have been out of print for a long time, but were released on DVD by late 2006. The color movies were low budget productions with actor Olof Thunberg narrating and voicing all characters, but they are considered to be classics and the musical theme is easily recognized by most Swedes.

In October 2006, forty years after Bamse was created, Ola Andréasson, the son of creator Rune Andréasson, announced that an animated feature film will be made, featuring better animation, a full voice cast and having a budget of SEK 25 million (approximately US$3,4 million, €2,7 million). The movie will probably be released in 2008.

In 1998, the themepark Bamses Värld (“Bamse’s World”) started as an attraction at the KolmÃ¥rden 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 has not 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”
• “Vargen” – “Willie”
• “Katten Janson” (literally Janson the Cat) – “Sooty Johnson”

In this translation the dunderhonung was given the name “magic honey”. However, in the 1980s, Andréasson referred to it in English as “thunder honey” (which is the literal translation).

And if you think that Bamse is restricted to only Sweden, think again. According to the site Bamsesamlarna.com (“The Bamse collectors”) the Bamse magazine is printed in eleven different languages with a total circulation of 1.5 million. The cuddly little bear is still teaching children what is right and what is wrong.

• Bamse – Official site (in Swedish)
• Bamses Värld – “Bamse’s World” Official site (also in Swedish)