Panserbjørne
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In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels, the Panserbjørne (armoured bears in Danish) are large polar bears who almost always wear their robust armour. They have opposable thumbs on their front paws. Despite their large digits and immense strength they have remarkable dexterity. This, together with an innate sense of metallurgy, makes them exceptional metalsmiths, and they are capable of creating and repairing metal items far beyond the capabilities of human smiths. They are highly intelligent and, whilst they mainly appear to speak English, have been shown to speak in a number of indigenous languages.
They are governed by a king who is usually determined by bloodline, but can be elected by unarmed combat. They are the protectors of Svalbard, the centre of their civilization. However, in The Amber Spyglass, they voyage down to the Himalayas when Lord Asriel's interdimensional rift causes the climate to become inhospitable. Iorek Byrnison is the main Panserbjørn in the trilogy.
A panserbjørn fashions his own armour using 'sky-iron', rare iron collected from meteorites which the bears discover on or buried in the ice. Panserbjørne have a strong spiritual connection with their armour (much as humans do with their daemons). Although the magical metal described in Pullman's works is fictional, the native peoples of the arctic do value meteorites (particularly the Cape York meteorite) as an invaluable source of iron for toolmaking.
The armoured bears are often in a struggle between keeping their animal customs and growing to a human level, especially when Iofur Raknison, the king of Svalbard before Iorek, tries to change their society, attempting to make palaces, universities, decorations, and even trying to acquire dæmons. Iorek eventually defeats Iofur to bring the bears to a more primitive state; however, later in the series he begins to feel human feelings such as doubt, and is asked if creating armour was a human action itself. Iorek, however, decides there is a line between bear custom and human behavior.
Early UK editions of the novels had Panserbørne instead of Panserbjørne.
