Bamse

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For other uses, see Bamse (disambiguation).

Bamse – Världens starkaste björn ("The world's strongest bear") is a Swedish cartoon 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 from 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.

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. 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. They are now around seven years old, in a narratively advantageous eternal state as first-graders.

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

Bamse is sometimes confused with Rasmus Klump, the main character in another cartoon which is also a bear.

Contents

[edit] Main characters

Bamse, the main character, is a brown bear who becomes the worlds strongest bear by eating a batch of honey called dunderhonung (lit. "thunder honey" or "rumble honey"), specially prepared for him by his grandmother. Most other characters will only get a three-day stomach-ache from eating it. Bamse is also the kindest bear in the world, and is often seen helping those in need. He is married to Brummelisa and they have four children: Brum, Teddy, Nalle-Maja and Brumma. The name Bamse comes from a Scandinavian word meaning bear or teddybear, but also huge, or giant. This is something of a misnomer, since Bamse is rather diminutive in size compared to many of the other characters.

Lille Skutt ("Little Hop") is Bamse's and Skalman's best friend. He is a very fast but notoriously frightened white rabbit with a red bow tie. He is married to Nina Kanin and they have a son called Mini-Hopp. Lille Skutt is the village postman.

Skalman ("Shell-man") is an ingenious tortoise who invents all sorts of things, including spacecraft and time machines. He stores just about anything in his carapace except for locomotives, spaceships or atlantic steamboats. 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 beaten the chess world champion).

[edit] Moral values and criticism

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. 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.[citation needed]

[edit] Films

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 colour. The later colour films have aired frequently on TV in Sweden and have been released on VHS and DVD. The black and white films had 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. The movie will probably be released in 2009[1].

[edit] Miscellaneous

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

In 1998 the themepark Bamses Värld ("Bamse's World") started as an attraction at the Kolmården Zoo.

In 1993, a Game Boy game was published[2][3] 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.

In the 1960s there were a few translations of the series "Bamses skola", where the characters were given English names[4]:

  • Bamse - Bamsy
  • Skalman - Professor Shellback
  • Lille Skutt - Little Frisky
  • Vargen - Willie
  • Katten Janson (literally Janson the Cat) - Sooty

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.

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.hemtex.com/sv/Start/Hemtex-and-More/Design-pa-Hemtex--More/Bamse/ (In Swedish)
  2. ^ Bamsesamlarna.com - För dig som samlar på Bamse och andra serier av Rune Andréasson
  3. ^ http://community.superplay.se/blogs/jonas_hgberg/archive/2007/01/31/bamse-goes-game-boy.aspx (In Swedish)
  4. ^ Bamsesamlarna.com - För dig som samlar på Bamse och andra serier av Rune Andréasson

[edit] External links