Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Characters / Bamse

Go To

Being a long-running comic with tons of characters, Bamse has a fairly large multi-generational cast. Comic-Book Time ensures confusion.

The main Trio

The main characters, who form the central cast for most stories, especially the older and the more adventure-centric ones:

Bamse

Bamse, the ego of the three, is a small brown bear, usually dressed in blue. He's actually pretty small for a bear (but was apparently quite large at birth) He is described as "The world's strongest, and kindest, bear." and prefers the latter title to the former. He becomes incredibly strong by eating a special honey ('Dunderhonung,' which loosely translated means "Thunder Honey") cooked by his grandmother. Married with four children. While having had a variety of jobs, Bamse most commonly works as a lumberjack. His name means "big" and is also a euphemism for "bear".
  • Beware the Nice Ones: While it's very hard to drive Bamse to a point where he enters a Berserker Rage, the result is terrible. When he once thought Nalle-Maja was kidnapped, he went around using his strength to scare the villains in town into telling him where she was (he even threw Kroesus into the air). Also, when he got bullied as a kid, he once threw the bully (who was his own age) more than 100 feet into the sky.
  • The Big Guy: Despite being rather small.
  • Catchphrase: He has two, which he uses infrequently: "Nobody turns good by being beaten" and "Better to be kind than strong." The last one is lightly deconstructed in one story, when he thinks the dunderhonung has stopped working on hin, and is forced to admit that it's a lot easier to say that sort of thing when you already are strong.
  • Does Not Know His Own Strength: Occasionally played with. For example, right after his triplets are born, Bamse eats dunderhonung and attempts to build three cribs. Turns out super strength is really handy for sawing, but when it comes to hammering in nails without smashing the whole thing... not so much.
  • Fearless Fool: Although self-aware enough to know this.
  • Improbable Aiming Skills: During one of his many adventures in the Wild West, Bamse is shot at by a Villain of the Week who "never misses". However, having been handed his own revolver by Skalman moments earlier, Bamse pulls off two shots, one knocking the villain's bullet out of the air, and the other hitting the villain's revolver barrel, destroying the weapon. This from someone who is more likely to tie up gun barrels than firing the weapons, who had a split second to line up the shots, and who doesn't have Skalman's ability to pull insanely complicated maths out of thin air.
  • Nice Guy: He values kindness over everything else, to the point of almost being a Wide-Eyed Idealist at times.
  • Papa Wolf: Best illustrated when he believes that Nalle-Maja has beeb kidnapped. He goes and threatens every bad guy he knows, and smashes Krösus' desk, threatening to do the same to him if his daughter isn't returned safely. However when he finds out she was never in any danger, he instantly goes and apologizes to everyone he antagonized, even promising to get Krösus a new desk.
  • Parental Abandonment: Not by choice, mind you. They disappeared at sea when Bamse was a cub, and he was raised by Granny. Decades later, he found his parents still alive, but marooned on an island inhabited by a race of childlike tribals who they helped with their medical skills. They're overjoyed to reunite with their son, but eventuall decide to remain on the island with the tribe.
  • Power-Up Food: Dunderhonung. It only works for him, though; with very few exceptions, anyone else who eats it gets a stomachache that lasts for three days.
  • The Smart Guy: Played with. While he's actually pretty dumb, the rest of the town sees him as this. This was made clear when Reinard once sold a drink that supposedly made one smart if one drank it... unless you were exceedingly stupid, in which case you would get itches. When Bamse got itches, the townsfolk called the bluff out... since Bamse can't be stupid, right?
    • To be fair, though, Bamse has repeatedly been shown to be smarter than most of the town anyway.
  • Super-Strength: Temporarily
  • Technical Pacifist: He never fights to injure his enemies, he prefers to break their weapons and incapacitate them, usually by sticking them somewhere high up or otherwise non-harmfilly disabling them.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: When he believed Nalle-Maja had been kidnapped, he began acting like a total dick to his two best friends. He calms down and apologizes once he finds out she was fine.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: The world of Bamse isn't quite cynical enough for this trope to be played completely straight, but Bamse does have a tendency to think better of people than they really deserve, and has often been manipulated or played for a fool by villains who knew how to exploit his desire to see the best in everyone.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: With dunderhonung in him he could overpower anyone. Which is exactly why it's important that he doesn't use force to solve problems but opts for peaceful resolutions by talking things out instead.
    • It helps that most of his antagonists calm down considerably if he reveals that he's currently super strong, making them more open to diplomatic solutions.
    • Another important (though seldom mentioned) point is that dunderhonung will not work if he tries to do something mean, so in fact he cannot hit anyone. This was established in a comic where Bamse got fed up with a bully who wouldn't see reason and decided to give him a good wallop – cue super strength failing and Bamse getting roughed up instead. Exactly where the line goes is unclear, but setting out to hit people seems to be out of the question, while doing so in self-defence is okay.
  • World's Strongest Man: Well... bear.

Skalman

The superego of the three, is a tortoise of indeterminable age. Definitely brains of the group, although his effectiveness and borderline Deus ex Machina nature is often checked by his obsessive adherence to a complicated schedule of eating and sleeping, governed by his "Eat-and-sleep clock". Directly translated his name becomes "Shell-man".
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: He generally dismisses anything that seems supernatural as trickery or superstition, despite him *having worked for not one but two evil wizards* and having multiple encounters with witches. He doesn't deny the existance of magic or monsters, which exist in the comic's world in spades, but is still a skeptic by nature.
  • Awesomeness by Analysis: Has outshot Robin Hood and beaten the world records at discus and polejumping (on separate occasions) using mathematics.
  • Bag of Holding: His shell contains pretty much every object and material known to man. Several characters have asked him what he does not have in his shell, and he pretty quickly answers that the only things not in there are atlantic steamer and locomotive, and the reason why is because there's no space left for them.
  • Birthday Hater: Not a hater per se, but he believes birthdays are unnecessary, due to his old age and in his own words "I may have lived another year, but it only matters what I do with them."
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: He is a Gadgeteer Genius and the smartest man in town, but his other defining trait is also taking many naps and being a Heavy Sleeper. Although to be fair, Skalman is so smart that he doesn’t even need to give that much thought effort when having to solve a problem or make an invention.
  • Celibate Hero: Only one in the trio to never marry or show any interest... he has on occasion noticed the beauty of some female characters (he did seem slightly smitten with the beautiful good fairy in one story), but never shows any interest beyond this.
  • Creature of Habit: He has a schedule for eating and sleeping that he follows religiously.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Though without question the smartest character in the comic, the one who never falls for ploys and tricks, and overall the one most likely to know what's going on before anyone else has a clue, he has a curious tendency to overlook or misunderstand completely obvious things, particularly if they involve extreme emotional reactions. One very blatant example being in the 2018 movie Bamse och Dunderklockan where he and Lille Skutt are out locking for a special type of flower that Farmor needs to make dunderhonung. They find the flowers, but they also find a fire-breathing dragon guarding the flowers. While the dragon chases a terrified Lille Skutt around, Skalman calmly picks the flowers, all the while praising Lille Skutt for the excellent job he's doing keeping the dragon busy.
    Skalman: There, I think I have enough. Thank you, Lille Skutt! You can let it go now!
    Lille Skutt *running for his life*' LET IT GO?!
  • Cue O'Clock: He has an "eat-and-sleep" alarm clock like this that he always follows to the letter. This obsessive schedule keeps his Deus ex Machina tendencies in line.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Usually of the subtle kind — the others are often unsure of whether he's making fun of them or not. Most often, he is.
  • For Science!: The reasoning for a good chunk of his inventions. In fact, he directly states on several occasions that he doesn't care overly much about his finished inventions — it's the process of inventing that interests him. (The ones he keeps and uses after they're finished are usually the ones designed to make life more comfortable for him or will help him learn new things; any other invention, no matter how brilliant or revolutionizing, he'll either casually give away or — if he thinks it's too dangerous — destroy.)
  • Gadgeteer Genius: He is very skilled in engineering and science.
  • Hammerspace: He keeps all sorts of things in his shell, most of which are much too big for them to have fit in there. (In the early TV movies, he states that he does not have transoceanic steamships or lunar rockets in his shell, but heavily hints that he might have anything up to that.)
    • One story actually explained how he can store all these things in his shell; it's thanks to an old invention of his, which allows him to shrink objects to microscopic size. The objects immediately grow to their proper size as soon as they are taken out of the shell.
  • Heavy Sleeper:
    • When Skalman sleeps, he is completely unwakable. What's more, he obsessively obeys his Food-and-Sleep clock; if the clock says it's time for a nap, he'll instantly fall asleep no matter what he's doing or what's going on around him at the time. This is used to lower his Dexhina-ness.
    • That said, there have been instances in which he ignored the clock. Usually, these have been circumstances where his friends' lives are in immediate danger and they'll die if he falls asleep. Famously, he also stayed awake for the birth of Bamse's children.
  • Heroic BSoD: After Bamse's triplets ended up who-knows-where after using one of his inventions, which was incomplete and thus not completely safe, Skalman ends up sitting on a stool, staring into the wall, neither eating nor sleeping for 'days,' and contemplates how he'll never forgive himself.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: When he, Bamse and Teddy end up in a fairy tale book, they must drink a juice previously concocted by Skalman to leave the book. After Teddy escapes, Skalman notices that there isn't enough for both him and Bamse, and willingly stays behind to let Bamse escape because he has a family. Ultimately subverted because a fairy sends him back to his own world as a reward for his sacrifice.
  • Honorary Uncle: Not actually named as such, but still fulfills the role for Bamse's and Lille Skutt's children.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With everyone. The fact that Bamse's son, Teddy, is one of his friends probably doesn't seem especially odd from Skalman's perspective.
  • Mad Scientist: In his youth.
  • Mr. Exposition: Bamse and/or Lille Skutt often play The Watson to him so that he can explain things to them.
  • Mysterious Past: Or maybe not mysterious so much as extremely long and so filled with journeys and adventures that he never gets around to tell about them all.
  • Never Say That Again: The word "hurry" is the foulest and most offensive word Skalman knows; whenever someone uses it he'll always tell them to watch their language.
  • Older Than They Look: Skalman is apparently several hundred years old, having claimed to have trained The Three Musketeers and having relatives he has not visited in centuries.
  • Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He has had a lot of time to study, though, so it's kinda justified.
  • Omniscient Hero
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The amount of times he has either a) ignored his alarm clock or b) been legitimately angry with somebody can probably both be counted on one hand, combined, but in both cases it has been justified, such as Skalman trying and failing to get a panicking Bamse to Get A Hold Of Yourself Man and eventually snapping at him.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: A frequent user
  • Photographic Memory: He remembers everything he sees and hears, something he credits to not watching and listening to all the nonsense most people watch and listen to.
  • The Professor: The little-known English translation from the 1960s even Lampshaded this by giving him the name "Professor Shellback."

Lille Skutt

Is the id of the three, and the youngest of a large litter of rabbits (most of which have punny names about jumping) in the adventure stories his task is generally to fetch things, as he's the fastest of the group. He is usually the person to complain about heading into dangerous situations but inevitably follows anyway. Married since 1985 to Nina Kanin ("Nina Rabbit"). When not doing something else, he works as a mailman. His name means "little hop" or "little jump".
  • Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: He's completely naked except for his trademark red bow tie.
  • Cowardly Lion: Frequently lampshaded; despite being constantly afraid he always comes through in the end.
  • Cowardly Sidekick: Also frequently lampshaded; he never wants to join in on any adventures but he always does — partly because he feels it's safer by Bamse's side and partly because deep down he knows his speed and small size make him useful on the adventures.
    • It has actually gotten to the point that he's no longer really against going, considering that one of the few times he's actually been outright been unable to go on the adventure (due to injuring his foot) he actually lamented the fact.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Often when Bamse decides to trust or be kind to a villain, Skutt will think he's making a bad decision and/or snark about it.
  • The Gift: His speed. While he is only the third fastest character in the series, his natural talent for running is absolutely insane.
    • Rekord-Ronny, his faster cousin is the fastest running athlete in the world, and does almost nothing but train all day, and despite this, Lille Skutt can match him in really short runs, not lose too bad in medium-length races, and outright win long races(though this is more due to Ronny being bad at pacing himself in those). It was flat out stated in one of the comics featuring a race between the two that if Skutt trained like Ronny, he would easily be faster.
    • Snark-Björn(literal translation: Snore-Bear) is also faster than Skutt, and actually so fast that even Rekord-Ronny doesn't stand a smidge of chance. However, he's only run that fast once in his life(in fact, it might be the only time he ever ran period), and it was to save lives. It's quite possible he just performed massively over his own limits.
  • Heroes Love Dogs: He has a pet dog named Lurvas, whom he saved from drowning and has kept ever since.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Is often quick to judge people by a first impression, which is usually never a good thing. Subverted occasionally when he turns out to be right.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Not the most jerkish of jerks, but of the main heroes he's by far the most judgmental, the most vindictive, the most unwilling to help those in need and the most likely to jump to unfair conclusions. He's also always the one who goes against Bamse's "forgive and forget" parole and suggests doing something nasty to the villains instead. However, he's not malicious about it; all his Jerkass moments are simply due to him being afraid. He always comes around when he realizes that there's nothing to be afraid of, or when he realizes that he has to face his fear in order to aid his friends.
  • The McCoy
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Or in his case, wolves.

Families

The families of the main trio, who play important parts in the comic and — in the case of the children — are the main faces of the second-generation Cast Herd.

Farmor

Bamse's paternal grandmother, who raised him after his parents were lost at sea, and who makes the dunderhonung. Even in her old age, she is incredibly strong and agile, and more than capable of taking care of herself — as most of the villains who have tried interferring with her have discovered.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Makes meatballs and pancakes for everyone... And good luck if she gets upset.
  • Honorary Uncle: Most of the cast call her "Farmor" (Grandma), no matter if they're actually related to her or not. Only a few of the senior citizens regularly call her by her real name, Augusta Beata.
  • Parental Substitute: To Bamse. (Later on, his parents proved to still be alive.)
  • Super-Strength: Even without dunderhonung she's still strong enough to throw Vargen up a treetop.
  • Supreme Chef: With meatballs and pancakes as her specialties.
  • Trickster Mentor: She occasionally shows signs of this, though only towards villains who try messing with her or her family.

Brummelisa

Bamse's long-time girlfriend who eventually became his wife.
  • Action Mom: Not the most obvious example, but in later years she has become more of one.
  • Battle Couple: With Bamse. Though a Technical Pacifist version of the trope.
  • Limited Wardrobe: While all the characters in the comic follow this trope, Bummelisa has an interesting variant in that she changed her regular outfit for a different one when she got married.
  • Mama Bear: Literally. Though she is less obvious about it than Bamse or Farmor, threaten her family at your own risk.
  • Only Sane Man: Portrayed as this sometimes — though not always. She's usually smarter and wiser than Bamse, but on occasion can can be just like him.

Brum

One of Bamse's triplets, a talented artist and sensitive soul; the Ego of the secondary trio.
  • Afraid of Blood: In one story, he faints at the sight of it (though it later turned out to be ketchup and not blood at all).
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Bamse's four children fit the four types pretty well. Brum is Melancholic.
  • Nice Guy: Of all Bamse's children, he's probably the closest to his father in temperament.
  • Non-Action Guy: His sister is the very model of an Action Girl and his brother a Badass Bookworm, leaving him as this.
  • True Art Is Angsty: Usually, Brum's artwork is pretty cheery, but the trope was invoked in the story where he went through a "dark" period due to a rejection from a girl he liked and was promptly "discovered" as an artist.

Teddy

The second of Bamse's triplets; The Smart Guy of the younger generation (or sometimes even to the adults when Skalman is not around). An avid reader and collector of knowledge, he's the definite Superego of the secondary three.

Nalle-Maja

The third of Bamse's triplets, and one of the very few characters in the comic to gain super-strength from dunderhonung (though in her case, she also gets the three-day-long stomachache, after the strength had faded — which is why she only eats the honey if it's an emergency. Then again, one story indicated that she used to get just the strength — which was the central problem of the story, since she was still a baby at the time. Farmor solved it by altering the recipe for dunderhonung, and the stomachache made baby Nalle-Maja not want to eat it anymore). She's the Id of the secondary trio.

Brumma

Bamse's youngest daughter, Friend to All Living Things, and utterly adorable Cheerful Child with a smile that can melt the hearts of even the most hardened crooks. Some time after her birth, she was revealed as intellectually handicapped with serious communication and learning disabilities; the story "A Liberating Smile." She is the only character in the comic on whom dunderhonung has no effect whatsoever; it doesn't make her strong and it doesn't give her stomachaches.
  • Children Are Innocent: She is utterly incapable of seeing the bad in anyone, and is always the first to go and hug anyone who's looking upset.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine.
  • Hulk Speak: She sometimes uses this and sometimes not.
  • Imaginary Friend: She often visit the anthropomorphic household articles who live in an imaginary land under the kitchen sink.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue, with her best friend Mini-Hopp being the red half. Their fur colors are light brown and white, respectively, but their usual clothes are a perfect match.

Nina Kanin

Lille Skutts's wife, and the second half of the series' Beta Couple. For the longest of time, they were in a Cannot Spit It Out courtship, until he finally managed to propose (and promptly fainted when she immediately said yes).
  • Fun with Palindromes
  • Intrepid Reporter: Averted. While she does work as a newspaper reporter, she largely avoids the trope, and has also been seen as sharing the mail route with her husband.
  • Plucky Girl: Not the most extreme of examples, but she usually handles trouble very well and is far braver than her husband.

Mini-Hopp

The son of Lille Skutt and Nina Kanin; he's Brumma's age and her best friend. He has inherited his father's speed and ability for large leaps — making his name, which means "Mini-Jump" a largely ironic one. (This was at one point Lampshaded by Teddy, who wondered if the kid shouldn't have been named "Maxi-Hopp" instead.) Unlike his father, he is not afraid of anything and will cheerfully leap into and out of any danger he may encounter.
  • Fearless Fool: And, due to his age, far less self-aware about it than Bamse. He once went so far as to attack a giant octopus because it was scaring his mother.
  • Ironic Name: He's prone to making gigantic leaps. However the reason he named the way he is is because shortly after he was born, he made a "mini-hopp” from his mother's arms and his parents liked the sound of it.
  • Keet: Probably the purest example of the trope in the entire series.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red, to Brumma's blue. He's impulsive and energetic while she's calm and serene. Their favorite clothes are, naturally, red and blue.

Friends and Pets

Vargen

Initially the main antagonist, this wolf made a Heel–Face Turn and became the fourth ranger to the trio.
  • Abusive Parents: Abusive step-parents, anyway — they didn't even bother to give him a proper name, just calling him "lilla vargen" ("little wolf"). Which is why he is now the only wolf in the comic whose name is "Wolf."
  • All of the Other Reindeer: Or more specific, all of the other wolves.
  • The Artful Dodger: His criminal guardians exploited him as part of their schemes.
  • Clear My Name: After his Heel–Face Turn, other villains were very prone to use him as a clueless scapegoat. Usually, Skalman was the only one to believe Vargen in these situations.
  • Corruption of a Minor: As his Start of Darkness. His guardians, a trio of thieves, raised him to be a criminal like them.
  • Deceased Parents Are the Best: His real parents were killed in a forest fire when Vargen was a cub. From what little is seen of them, they were loving and kind. However, Vargen doesnt remember them, and is not aware who is real parents were.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": His name is Swedish for "Wolf".
  • The Dreaded: In his villain days, Vargen was the terror of the whole town and his reputation had spread across the world.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Trying to squish Bamse underneath a massive boulder? Totally acceptable. Letting him fall to his death when an avalanche sweeps him over a cliff? Make a mad dash to catch him (to Knocke and Smocke's great chagrin).
  • Expy: He's an expy to Teddy (the series that was essentially the Bamse prototype) villain Martin Mickel, a mean fox in a nice suit. When Bamse was made, most of Martin's behaviour went to Vargen, and the "villain in a nice suit" went to Kroesus.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door: For a while after his first Turn, but he eventually settled for Face.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Was portrayed as this for a short time before and a long time after his Heel–Face Turn, though his jerkishness lessened considerably over time and the heart of gold becoming more prominent.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: During his darkest moments as a villain, he often planned to kill Bamse and friends in this manner. Favourite method? Massive boulder crushing Skalmans car.
  • Orphan's Ordeal: Oh boy, did he ever have an ordeal. Raised by cruel and abusive criminals who exploited him for criminal schemes, he tried to make a decent life for himself, but failed.
  • Scary Black Man: Initially, he is this for Lille Skutt.
  • Species Surname: Actually a Species ONLY Name, since Vargen literally means "the Wolf".
  • Start of Darkness: Often regarded as the best Bamse story ever. He was born to loving parents, but they were killed in a forest fire when he was an infant, though his mother managed to save him by putting his crib in the river. He was found by a trio of thieves who became his abusive guardians, and things just got worse from there...
  • Then Let Me Be Evil: Had this moment already as a kid. He grew up with abusive step-parents who constantly used him in their criminal schemes and introduced him to a life of crime. When they were arrested, he escaped the law and tried making a new, honest life for himself — but once his criminal past was discovered he found himself distrusted and harassed by "honest" people who told him in no uncertain terms that "once a crook, always a crook." Believing there was no hope or salvation for him, he decided that if he was going to be a crook anyway, he'd be the worst one.
    • He had a couple of such moments after his Heel–Face Turn as well, when he was framed by other villains and people turned against him because they thought he'd returned to his evil ways. In these cases, however, his conscience generally got the better of him and he found he didn't have the heart to go through with anything really nasty.
  • Token Minority: He's the only black wolf among gray wolves, not counting his biological parents seen only in the first page of his Start of Darkness.
  • Used to Be a Sweet Kid: He really was, even under his step fathers care. However, decades of relentless mistreatment took their toll.
  • White Sheep: After his Heel–Face Turn.

Mickelina Räv, Ola Grävling and Annika Anka

Three of Bamse's friends and among the more notable members of the "Bamse Gang." They were more prominent in the comic's early years, but got much more minor roles as the years went on and other characters (such as Bamse's and Lille Skutt's wives and children) were introduced and got more development. They still show up every now and again, though; Mickelina especially.
  • Demoted to Extra: All three of them, though Annika is probably the most notable example. She was never a major character to begin with, and appears very rarely in later years.
    • They have been more common now that the comic has left its Status Quo Is God.
      • The recent "Bamse's childhood" stories that pop up quite often nowadays also feature the whole crew.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: Ola and Mickelina, who after moving out from their respective parents's houses, became roommates in an apartment in the city. A lot of their friends thought this meant they were romantically involved (and, to be fair, some stories have hinted of a possible romance between them), but they denied that any romance was happening, and have remain "just" best friends since.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Annika is brave, fierce and a bit on the reckless side, Mickelina is calm, intelligent and logical.
  • Those Two Guys: Well, Those Two Girls And One Guy. Or That Guy And That Girl, for when Ola and Mickelina appear without Annika.
  • Vague Age: Perhaps one reason for their lessening roles in the stories; Bamse and Lille Skutt were also this for a long time but after some time were firmly established as adults, as they married and had children, but Ola, Mickelina and Annika remained possibly-children-possibly-teenagers for a long time afterwards.
    • It can be debated how vague their age is these days though, as they are confirmed to only be two years younger than Bamse, who is almost certainly 28 at this point(used to be 26, but since his children are now in the third grade rather than first, he hasto be a bit older as well).

Burre

A classmate and friend of Bamse's children. He comes from a poor and slightly dysfunctional family, and sometimes lashes out at others because of this. When he was introduced he was the biggest bully in playschool, and often got into fights with Nalle-Maja, but he mellowed out over time and became friendlier with the other kids — even if he's still a bit of a rascal.
  • Abusive Parents: His father was originally shown as an abusive drunk, but this was dropped eventually, and changed to him being a temperamental but largely okay father, if with a bit of a gambling problem.
  • Bully Bulldog: Of the anthropomorphic kind; though the "bully" part has diminished a lot.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: With Vargen, which really isn't so surprising given how much alike they are. Burre thinks Vargen is the coolest adult ever.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's really not a bad guy, but he has a problem with his temper and sometimes can't resist getting into mischief.
  • Slap-Slap-Kiss: With Nalle-Maja, though they're perhaps a little too young for it to be romantic.

Katten Jansson and Husmusen

Farmor's pet cat and mouse, who frequently act as Team Pets on various adventures. Unlike the other main characters, they are (fairly) non-anthropomorphic animals, adding to the Furry Confusion of the comic.
  • All of the Other Reindeer: Other cats mock Jansson for being friends with a mouse. He usually gets his comeuppance.
  • Ambiguous Gender: Or possibly a very strong case of Viewer Gender Confusion. Husmusen is usually identified as male, but in several stories and adaptations (and even sometimes on the letter page) is referred to as female.
  • Animal Talk: The most obvious example here, as Katten Jansson and Husmusen can talk to each other and to any other non-anthropomorphic animals, but not to the anthropomorphic ones. They are shown to perfectly understand what Bamse and Farmor say to them, though.
  • Art Evolution: Husmusen is possibly the only character in the comic to be notably affected by this — unlike just about everyone else, he looks markedly different in later appearances.
  • Cats Are Mean: Mostly averted; Jansson can be selfish and mischevious, but is basically good-hearted.
  • Cats Are Snarkers: And so, apparently, are mice. Sometimes the two engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat, sometimes they team up to snark about everyone else. Just as well, perhaps, that most of the other characters don't understand what they're saying.
  • A Dog Named "Dog": Husmusen — the name means 'the House Mouse' (Katten Jansson, meanwhile, is literally a cat named 'the Cat', but supplements it with the surname Jansson).
  • Expy: Jansson looks and acts almost exactly like Colombus, the pet cat of Lille Rickard (a previous comic by Rune Andreasson), and Husmusen owes a lot of his appearance (especially in earlier comics, before the Art Evolution kicked in) to the toy mouse Pip, from Pellefant (yet another earlier Rune Andreasson comic). Furthermore, their friendship is a lot like that of Pellefant and Pip from that comic, with Jansson's personality being a lot like a toned-down version of Pellefant's.
  • Furry Confusion: Whereas most of the cast are Funny Animals, these two are more Largely Normal Animals. They are sapient and can talk between themselves, but they are still clearly a cat and a mouse.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Jansson loves to brag about how smart, strong and cool he is, but can never back it up.
  • Spanner in the Works: Their most common role in adventure stories. Usually too small and unassuming to be noticed by the villains, they have more often saved the day by going off for help or managing to bring dunderhonung to Bamse when he's run out.
    • Occasionally a double-edged version of this trope, since they tend to stow away on the adventure in an empty jar of dunderhonung; this jar of dunderhonung frequently is exactly the jar Bamse brings with him as an emergency supply.
  • Those Two Guys: Or possibly Those Two Team Pets?
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Type 2, mild case. They love to prank, trick and tease one another, but are still the best of friends. In addition, they occasionally team up in a similar Vitriolic Best Buds relationship with Lurvas, Lille Skutt's pet dog.

Lurvas and Amanda

Lille Skutt and Nina Kanin's two pet dogs, who have a romance going on between themselves. Lurvas has been in the comic for longest; Lille Skutt saved him from drowning and has kept him as a pet ever since. Amanda originally belonged to an aunt of Nina's, who had to go away for a long time and left her dog in Nina's care. Since Lille Skutt and Nina married, the two dogs have been pretty much inseparable.
  • Animal Talk: Like Katten Jansson and Husmusen, they can talk to each other and to the other non-athropopmorphic animals, but not to the anthropomorphic ones.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: When Lille Skutt was still in his Cannot Spit It Out phase and was pretty much obsessing over Nina, Lurvas was incredibly jealous and resolved to hate Nina. He came around because he realized she was kind to him — and when Nina got Amanda, whom Lurvas immediately developed a crush on, any dislike for Nina that was left vanished.
  • Out of Focus: The two dogs very rarely appear in the comic in later years; even in stories that take place in Lille Skutt's home they're usually nowhere to be seen and unlike Katten Jansson and Husmusen they never go along on any of the journeys or adventures.
  • Satellite Character: Amanda is pretty much there to interact with Lurvas and doesn't seem to have many relationships outside him.
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Amanda has a red bow on top of her head, just in case we didn't get that she's female.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Lurvas with Katten Jansson and Husmusen. When the cat and mouse aren't teasing and pranking each other, they loive to team up in order to tease and prank the dog — who responds in kind. It's all good-natured, though, and at the end they really are the best of friends.

Surre

Bamse's pet bee. While usually a very minor character, he's notable as the only recurring character in the comic apart from Bamse and Nalle-Maja who gets super-strength from eating dunderhonung.

Villains

Krösus Sork (Croesus Vole)

Rich capitalist and Corrupt Corporate Executive who will do anything for profit. He's probably the closest thing the comic has to a Big Bad — there have been several villains who were both more evil and bigger threats, but they were usually One Shot Characters — and is consistently portrayed as one of the very few characters with little or no hope for redemption.
  • Big Bad: The closest thing the comic has to a big bad, as he is the most recurring villain while most other were merely one-shots.
  • Cain and Abel: He has this dynamic with his brother Slösus (the name is a pun on the word slösa, which means "squander"), who is kind, generous and constantly broke because he gives away all his money. When his more popular and successful brother won a huge amount of money in the lottery. Krösus stole the winning ticket and left a fake one in its place, which resulted not only in Krösus getting the prize money with which he'd start his fortune, but his brother going to jail for forgery and fraud.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Doesnt care about anything other than money.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Downplayed in that Krösus prefers to outwardly come off as somewhat affable, if only for pragmatic reasons, but he is quite short-tempered with his fixer-voles and a greedy, corrupt capitalist to the core.
  • Karma Houdini: Sort of. He is one of the more successful villains is the story, and one of few who acctually succeed with his plans every now and then. Even when his greedy schemes fail or backfire, he's never arrested because there is never enough evidence to incriminate him. His mooks, the fixer-voles, frequently take the fall for him. It's implied that the local police know that he is this, but as they cannot arrest him without some kind of evidence they cannot really do anything about it.
  • Meaningful Name: Though it turns out that "Krösus" ("Croesus",) was simply an ironic childhood nickname his classmates gave him because he never had any money. Possibly as a Take That! to them, he adopted the name as his own when he really did get rich.
  • Pet the Dog: While most of his "nice" acts are just for show and usually done with some sinister or at least selfish motive, he did on one occasion save Bamse from drowning because he just couldn't abandon him to his fate.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: This is Krösus' modus operandi. He's constantly frustrated by the fact that Bamse and his friends cannot be bought.
  • Smug Snake: While his schemes aren’t necessarily always poorly thought-out, many times he is too overconfident with them.
  • Start of Darkness: Like Vargen, he eventually got an origin story that gave him a Freudian Excuse for his villainous behavior. Unlike Vargen, it hasn't earned him any sympathy.
  • The Un-Favorite: The entire reason for not only his relationship with his brother, but for his criminal career.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Outworthy, he remains a legal and law-abiding businessman. While he basically heads and finances all the organized crime in his hometown, he makes sure to keep his own hands clean.
  • Would Steal From A Child: Has no moral objections to stealing money from an orphanage, threatening the place to get closed down as a result. And we're not talking about financial skullduggery and tricks - he had his mooks repeatedly break in through a secret passage and rob the money box. (And judging by some hastily-removed evidence, did so personally, too.)

Reinard

An elegant, cunning and villainous fox, and the first major character to be introduced after Rune Andreasson's death. Reinard is by far the smartest and most successful villain in the comic, he was basically introduced because apart from Krösus, most of the recurring villains had long since stopped being threatening.

  • The Bad Guy Wins: Uniquely for the comic, Reinard manages to come out on top in several stories; or at least accomplish some small victory. It was made clear that he wasn't quite like the other villains in his debut story — while his plan to get rid of Bamse failed, and he never got to carry out his plan to break into the museum, he managed to turn his failure to his advantage: Since he was stopped before he broke in, he hadn't actually committed any crime and as such couldn't be arrested or punished for anything.
  • The Chessmaster: He's the smartest of all the villains, and is good at manipulating and using people to his own advantage.
  • Cunning Like a Fox
  • Doing It for the Art: His villainy is this to a degree. Reinard will steal money, sure, but it's really all about the steal. In the Elephant Ruby story, he steals the most valuable gem in the world, and selling it doesn't even enter his mind.
  • Expy: He's pretty much a more elegant, more subtly manipulative and more successful version of Vargen from his earlier, villainous days.
    • Especially noticable in the stage play Bamse och Världsmästaren i Elakhet ("Bamse and the World Champion of Nastiness"), where Reinard is the main villain and behaves almost exactly like Vargen did in the early stories, and doesn't come across as too out of character.
      • He's also an expy to Teddy(the series that was essentially the Bamse prototype) villain Martin Mickel- a mean, sly fox in a nice suit. In fact, the Reinard Special had a cut-out picture of Reinard that you could dress up, and all the clothes outside Reinard's regular suit? Martin's exact outfit.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Reinard uses Mickelina to scam people for money so that the two can get rich and run away together. She does NOT take it well when she finds out what he has done, and he genuinely can't understand why.
  • Faux Affably Evil: He can be very polite and charming, but it's usually just a way of tricking and manipulating others.
  • Pet the Dog: Very rarely, but he gets a few moments where he shows some redeeming qualities — they mostly revolve around his crush on Mickelina.
  • Karma Houdini: An even bigger one than Krösus.
  • Knight of Cerebus: He was introduced as a villain who would actually be a challenge.
  • To Be a Master: Reinard's biggest goal is to become the World Champion of Nastiness, the title formerly held by Vargen. Though he actually has a higher success rate in his stories than Vargen did, he never quite manages to qualify for that diploma…
  • Verbal Tic: In the English dub of the movie Bamse och tjustaden ("Bamse and the City of Thieves"), he tends to end his statements with the word "see", see? It's just how he talks, see?

Knocke and Smocke

Two thugs and lowlife criminals, who were often seen palling around with Vargen before his Heel–Face Turn, but unlike him have remained villains. They're big, strong and mean... and not terribly bright.
  • The Brute: They're big and strong, and would probably have been pretty threatening if they hadn't been such screw-ups... or if Bamse with his dunderhonung hadn't been so much stronger than them anyway.
  • Creepy Crossdresser: In the movie Bamse och Tjuvstaden ("Bamse and the Thief City") they dress up in drag as a disguise. The need for the disguise only lasts for one scene, but Knocke likes his dress so much that he keeps wearing it for the rest of the movie. The rest of the villains, including Smocke, just shrug and go along with it... though they draw the line at letting him wear pink earrings.
  • The Dividual: Of the Twindividual variety; they look and act exactly alike apart from the color of their clothes.
  • Identical Twin ID Tag: The only difference between them is that one wears clothes with purple and white stripes, while the other wears clothes with blue and white stripes.
  • Perma-Stubble: They are constantly unshaven.

The Wolf Cousins

A large number of relatives – not necessarily cousins – of Vargen's. Most are villains, but exactly how villainous they are varies. The most frequently occurring ones are Busifer, Kubbe and Lill-Vargen (Little Wolf), who live in a shack in the woods. Depending on the Writer they often have a fourth wolf living there, either Klante or Hinke. They often try to tempt Vargen back to his bad old ways, or frame him for their own crimes, but mostly they are seriously ineffective. In many stories, they are actually not up to anything seriously criminal but just being amusingly inept at normal tasks like repairing their house or planting a garden.
  • Big, Thin, Short Trio: Kubbe, Busifer and Lill-Vargen respectively.
  • The Brute: Kubbe is the biggest and strongest wolf and sometimes teams up with Knocke and Smocke to form a kind of brute squad.
  • Butt-Monkey: Lill-vargen, being the smallest, typically ends up having to do any work that absolutely needs doing around the house.
  • Cheaters Never Prosper: It is not unusual for the Wolf Cousins (and friends, occasionally) to challenge Team Bamse in some sport or other. They invariably cheat at every opportunity, and just as invariably lose. Except once, when they thought they had lost, but Bamse confessed that he had cheated. Team Wolf were so stunned that they shared the prize cake with Team Bamse anyway.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In one story, Busifer has a giant fish on the hook when Bamse's youngest comes falling from the cliff above him. He (very) briefly struggles with the dilemma whether or not to let the rod go to catch the bear cub, but he comes through for Brumma.
  • Just Like Robin Hood: Stor-Smart and Lill-Tok (Big Smart and Little Fool) are two wolf cousins who, for some odd reason, wear Robin Hood style clothes and use bows and arrows. They wouldn't dream of giving anything to the poor, though.
  • Laborious Laziness: The cousins spend a lot of time and effort trying to avoid doing anything.
  • The Leader: Busifer certainly sees himself as the leader of the gang, and he is the smartest of them. Which doesn't really say all that much.
  • Minion with an F in Evil: Lill-Vargen is the nicest of them. He can be mischievous, but seldom outright evil.
  • Punny Name: Busifer is a Portmanteau of Lucifer and "bus", the Swedish word for "mischief".
  • Siblings in Crime: Their exact relationship to each other is a little unclear, but they function like this trope.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top