Series / Brødrene Dal

From left to right: Gaus, Brumund and Roms Dal

Brødrene Dal (the Dal Brothers) is a trio of fictional explorers featured in a series of Norwegian television shows and a feature-length film. Written and portrayed by Lars Mjøen, Knut Lystad and Trond Kirkvaag (known collectively as KLM - the Norwegian equivalent to Monty Python), the three brothers are Gaus (Mjøen), the straight-faced, natural leader of the group; Roms (Lystad), the most easy-going brother, sometimes to the point of naivety; and Brumund (Kirkvaag), the most quirky member, identified by his distinctive propeller hat.

Apart from the three brothers, the only recurring main character is the Narrator, played by comedian Tom Mathisen, who follows them around (in the early series, just as a voiceover, but in later series he began making more physical appearances) and chronicles their adventures, tells the audience to keep following the series and at the end of each episode makes increasingly absurd predictions about what will happen next time.

Their escapades have them encounter several hurricanes of puns, sight gags and clever, if not exactly easily translatable, wordplay.

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List of Brødrene Dal productions:

• Professor Drøvels hemmelighet (The Secret of Professor Uvula), their debut series, had them in search of missing explorer Professor Drøvel, traversing Overfloden, an uncharted river crowded with absurd characters and events.
• Spektralsteinene (The Spectral Stones): while searching for a special substance to cure the common cold, Roms receives a ring containing mysterious blueprints for what turns out to be a time machine from an alien. They travel through time, including the Viking Age, Ancient Egypt, Medieval France and Nazi-occupied Norway.
• Legenden om Atlant-is (The Legend of Atlant-Ice): Summoned by a mysterious shaman, the brothers are tasked with retrieving the mysterious twin urns Urk and Irka which have been stolen from the Sami people. It turns out the urns are the keys to the lost city of Atlant-is which hides the Fountain of Youth. However, a corrupt "snow research company" are after the same thing ...
• Mysteriet om Karl XIIs gamasjer (The Mystery of Charles XII's Spats): The brothers travel through time (again) to find the lost spats of Swedish monarch Charles XII, a key instrument in the continuation of Norway's independence; if they are not retrieved by the 100th anniversary of Norway's Constitutional Day, Norway will be considered part of Sweden once again. A mysterious organization known as "Pavo" attempts to thwart their attempts to do this at any cost. (This series also introduced the "next generation" of Dal siblings; nephews Snerting and Joste and niece Mette-Mari.)
• Vikingsverdets forbannelse (The Curse of the Viking Sword): Feature-length film based on recordings of an original theatrical production, cleverly edited into a feature. As Kirkvaag had died in the interim, Brumund only interacts with the brothers via a video screen (archived footage).

In addition, the brothers have appeared in numerous smaller projects like commercials, a couple of audio productions, and even a comic album loosely based on the fourth series. They have also made cameo appearances in a number of other Norwegian TV productions, several of them being other KLM series.

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Tropes Associated with Brødrene Dal:

• Adapted Out: Brumund's secret wife, Arlene, appears in the fourth series, but not in the novelization of that same series. She does appear in the comic based on the series, and in a much larger role at that... but Joste, Snerting and Mette-Mari (who do appear in the novelization) don't.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Actually, they refer to themselves as "explorers" rather than archeologists — though they are shown participating in actual archaeology once or twice.
• Affectionate Parody: The first season is very much a nod to Monty Python like their other work, but most of the others are to Doctor Who with time and space travel, and the 3rd season of Indiana Jones. But of course with of Norwegian culture and pop culture.
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: Obviously played for laughs when the sherriff (or in this case the girraffe) of Nottingham, robbed naked, tries to present himself as such, only to get the trope invoked, and then turned into an Overly Long Gag, because the "merry man" in question rails off, still standing there at the end of the scene, wondering who he really is...

  (Laughing): Are you the Girraffe of Nottingham? If you are the Girraffe, then I am... (more to himself): If he is the Girraffe, then I am... who am I, if he is the Girraffe? (rails off completely)

• Ascended Extra:
  • The Narrator. He was a fairly normal voice-over narrator in the first series, but his role increased, and by the time of the third series he was as essential a character as the brothers themselves.
  • A curious example with Brumund's wife, Arlene. Her appearances in the fourth series are just a Running Gag and she doesn't play any part in the plot. In the comic album that very loosely adapts the same series, she is a fairly major character, and turns out to be the Spanner in the Works that thwarts the bad guys' plan.
• Badass Family: The Dal family, ancestors and descendants included.
• Bag of Holding: Let's just say the brothers' "traveling backpack" has an inordinate amount of space.
• Battle Discretion Shot: Parodied in Spekstralsteinene, when the famous battle of Stiklestad is about to start, and the Narrator suddenly shows up on-camera to inform the viewer that this battle was much too bloody to be shown on TV. He instead holds up a copy of Halfdan Egedius's famous illustration of St. Olav's death◊ for the camera.
• Been There, Shaped History: All three brothers are this in both series that deal with time travel. Among other things, they inspired Egyptian slaves to dig the Suez Canal, convinced Prince Carl of Denmark to become King Haakon of Norway, and inspired the invention of danish red hot dogs.
• Bootstrapped Theme: "The Eye of Wendor" by symphonic prog group Mandalaband, while referred to as the main theme by media, is actually the end credits theme; every series has its individual main theme.
• Boring Return Journey: Played with in the final episode of Professor Drøvel's hemmelighet the narrator states that after they found the egg, the journey back was just as tough as their journey down the river, and they experienced the exact same events, but in the opposite order. He explains that the reason we don't get to see these events again in the opposite order is because it would've made the final episode over three hours long.
• Bound and Gagged: Impostor Brumund in Atlant-is, Mette-Mari in Karl XII.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Frequent aside glances, and sometimes the characters are even shown consulting the script or talking directly to the audience. Crowning honors go, of course, to the Narrator, to whom the fourth wall does not seem to exist.
• Call-Back: In the first series, the brothers finally find Professor Drøvel, who is unable to talk and can only cluck like a chicken after spending several decades inside an egg (it barely makes sense in context). In the final series, twenty-six years later, the Professor makes a couple of cameo appearances... and he still only clucks like a chicken, which makes his new job as a talk show host a little awkward.
• The Cameo: In total, a veritable cross-section of reputable Norwegian actors and other celebrities from all eras, especially in the two latter series.
  • The brothers themselves, with Drøvel inside the egg, cameoed prominently in another series, rescuing the heroes from an impossible situation.
  • In Atlant-Is, top politician and future prime minister Kell-Magne Bondevik makes a cameo.
• Cannot Self Terminate: Robinson Caruso apparently tried to drown himself in his youth. He walked, and walked, and walked, and walked out into the sea, it was very shallow there, until the tide came. We don't know what happened after (Long Friday was vacuuming as he told the story), but he clearly never drowned, but ended up on the island.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Literally, in the case of the pirate captain on Robinson Caruso's island (no, that name is not misspelled) who has a license that reads "Occupation: Pirate".
• Catchphrase: The Narrator has two. The first is one he always repeats at the Cliffhanger endings, when he asks what will happen and urges the audience to keep following the series ("Følg med!") in order to find out what happened. This was played with a couple of times, such as the third-series episode that opens with the Narrator being followed around by a huge number of people who had misunderstood and thought he'd told them to keep following him.
  • The second Catchphrase is the less-used one but probably the most popular one: The Narrator opened the first series with a really pompous presentation: "The Universe — an eternity of stars and planets. Nobody knows how big or how old it is." This line got so popular with the audience that Tom Mathiesen was frequently asked to "do the Universe line." So in subsequent series, this line is treated more or less like the Narrator's Catchphrase, and he'll occasionally say it in order to identify himself to someone or because he's been asked by a fan to "do the Universe line."
  • Gaus, Roms and Brumund also have two. The first one is "Guys! Guys!" Used whenever one of the brothers wants to catch the other two's attention, or call their attention to something. At a couple of instances, when there were only two brothers present, the line was "Guys! Guys! Uh.. I mean.. Guy! Guy!"
  • The brothers' second shared phrase is "[Character name]?! You here?" Used whenever they're surprised to encounter someone. Taken to extremes in the third series, when the brothers unexpectedly reunite after having been split up for a couple of episodes:
  Gaus: Brumund?! You here?
  Brumund: Roms?! You here?
  Roms: Gaus?! You here?
  All three brothers (looking at the audience): The Dal brothers?! We here?
  Narrator: Correct. The Dal brothers, they here.
  All three brothers: Narrator?! You here?!
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Did you even read the list up there?
• Cliffhanger: Every episode ends with one; usually, these initially precarious situations are quickly defused as a joke when the next episode comes around.
• Clown-Car Base: The brothers' tent. Is roughly the size of a two-story house, contains creature comforts such as a stove, radio and television, and it all fits in the aforementioned Bag of Holding!
• Cloudcuckoolander: Basically, anyone and everyone.
  • Not to mention the "Problematic Institute" from Legenden om Atlant-is, whose every tenured professor seems to engage in... let's call it less-than-useful research (such as the square wheel).
• Concealing Canvas: Parodied in Karl XII's Spats. The brothers have a painting of a safe on the wall, hiding a real safe.
• Continuity Nod: Several in Vikingsverdets forbannelse, particularly in the CGI opening credits.
• Contrived Coincidence: Pretty much a Running Gag. The majority of tough situations the brothers get into are ended by some extreme luck or other deus ex machina.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive:
  • Ernst Muffens, head of Muldvarp inc. (Mole Inc.), is conducting "scientific research" on the snow in Lappland, but is actually trying to dig up and plunder a sacred city.
  • Skalter and Valter, owners of the consultant company Skalter & Valter, that are secretly part of Pavo with the goal of making Norway a subject state to Sweden.
• Cousin Oliver: Joste, Snerting and Mette Mari Dal (respectively the brothers' nephews and niece), introduced in Karl XII's gamasjer.
• Damsel in Distress: Mette-Mari briefly becomes this in Karl XI Is gamasjer when she is kidnapped by two thugs. She ends up bossing her kidnappers around so much that they end up throwing her out and telling her to get lost, just in time for her brothers to show up to "rescue" her.
• Darker and Edgier: Spektralsteinene is this to its immediate predecessor, containing genuinely scary instances, whereas the first (mostly) played instances of horror for comedy. See also Downer Ending below. This was actually done as a response to audience reactions; the writers found to their surprise that most of the children who watched the first series had missed that it was supposed to be a plotless comedy and just viewed it as a sort of action-adventure that was occasionally really scary. Hence they deliberately made the second series a lot more plot-focused and included more genuinely scary stuff. On the whole, the kids thought the second series was even better than the first thanks to this.
• A Day in the Limelight: The third and fourth series often focus on the Narrator and his misadventures. Indeed, he is actually the last main character seen in the series. Of course, he remained an unseen character for the first series and only had a few brief on-screen appearances in the second, so you could say he had earned it.
• Disguised in Drag: Brumund disguises himself as a member of a harem in Spektralsteinene, inevitably causing the sultan to fall for "her".
• Distaff Counterpart: Parodied — of course. The kids' show Halvsju, which showed Professor Drøvel's Hemmelighet as a serial, also showed the one-shot "Søstrene Li," where the Narrator first talks about how famous the Dal brothers have become, and then introduces us to their "biggest fans," the Li sisters. Hus Li (Anne Marie Ottersen), Engste Li (Anne Marit Jakobsen) and Dei Li (Frøydis Armand) ^note The names are a double example of an untranslatable pun — in Norwegian, "li" is a word for "hill" to contrast "Dal," which means "valley" — but the sisters' names are also puns on the adjectives "huslig" (domestic), "engstelig" (anxious) and "deilig" (lovely). all have big crushes on of the Dal brothers, and the Narrator spends a lot of time setting them up to fill the Ascended Fangirl Love Interest roles, detailing which sister loves which brother... and then it's all subverted because the sisters turn out to be totally ineffectual cowards and wimps. They set out to look for the brothers, but never get further than a few feet from their house because they either keep forgetting things or losing their nerve. The Narrator gets more and more frustrated with them, finally losing his temper when the sisters chance to find Professor Drøvel — you know, the same guy that the brothers spend the first serial searching for — and then promptly panic and run back home.
  Narrator: What in the world are you afraid of now? Do you think it's a tax collector? Or King Kong, or Dracula? Hah! Can't you see that it's Professor Kurt Drøvel himself? Come back here, Li sisters, come back here!! This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen! If you don't quit this I'll... eat my lunch! I've had enough of this! Hah! Bach!
  Hus Li: I'm gonna die!
  Narrator: I wish you would!
• Distracted by the Sexy: The bad guys' plan to sneak in an extra paragraph in the Norwegian Constitution hinges on this: Have a naked woman walk by outside just as everyone is about to sign the document, then call attention to her and sneak in the extra paragraph while everyone crowds by the window to see. Since everyone present at the signing is a man, the plan works.
• Downer Ending: Spektralsteinene ends with the Kurium 82 smashed against the ground, ending humanity's hope for a cure for the common cold, not to mention the other efficacious properties it is implied to have possessed...
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first series doesn't really have a plot and is just a series of loosely-connected skits and jokes, many of them completely unrelated to the main action, and the Narrator is played a lot straighter than in subsequent series; he's not even a character here. From the second series on, the adventures began having actual plots, the funny asides dominated less and the Narrator really evolved into the Large Ham character he's known as today, essentially becoming the fourth main character.
• Elvis Impersonator: One shows up in "Atlant-Is". Turns out that it's a coincidence, and the guy has never heard of Elvis. He's actually more of a classical music fan himself.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the movie, Sigurd (son of the ailing Viking Chief) demonstrates this when talking to his men:
  Sigurd: We've done our duty as Vikings! Right, men?!
  Vikings: Yeah!
  Sigurd: Have we fought?!
  Vikings: Yeah!
  Sigurd: Have we stolen?!
  Vikings: Yeah!
  Sigurd: Have we plundered?!
  Vikings: Yeah!
  Sigurd: Have we smashed?!
  Vikings: Yeah!
  Sigurd: Have we bullied?!
  Vikings: Ye — [pause] No.
  Sigurd: [nodding pleasantly] And why haven't we bullied? Well?
  Vikings: Uh... [pause]
  Sigurd: Because it's not nice to bully people!
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Narrator, or "Fortelleren" in KLM's native Norwegian. In fact, it's hinted that this might be his actual name.
• Expy: Fimbul the Sorcerer from the movie is pretty clearly a Viking version of Jafar, just slightly goofier and without the talking parrot.
• Excuse Plot: Professor Drøvels hemmelighet has the trio embark on a boat ride of assorted weirdness, with practically no plot development until the final episode.
• Fake Crossover: Mentioned, parodied and subverted in the fourth series. According to the King of Norway, the Norwegian government originally hired Sherlock Holmes to look for Charles XII's missing spats. Holmes looked for the spats for several years, until it was discovered that he was a fictional character and didn't really exist.
• Fake Interactivity: Parodied a couple of times in the third series, most notably one instance where the brothers have stowed away in the bad guy's truck and debating whether or not it's okay to eat some of the food they've found there:
  Gaus: I'm starving! Are you guys aware that we haven't eaten in several episodes? Couldn't we just have a tiny bit —
  Brumund: No, no, no! Honestly! We can't eat other people's food!
  Roms: Look — okay, okay! Let's ask the viewers! [points to the audience]
  Gaus: Yeah! Let's put it to a vote!
  Brumund: Okay, but just an advisory vote.
  Roms: [addressing the viewers] Those of you who think we shouldn't have any of this food, turn your TV off! Those of you who think it's okay that we have some, keep viewing!
  [beat]
  Roms: Okay, guys. All the viewers who are still with us think we should eat! In other words — it's unanimous!
  [the brothers begin eating]
• Family Theme Naming: Every member of the Dal family shares their name with an actual valley in Norway. The brothers are obviously named after the Roms, Gaus and Brummund valleys, but their father is Halling Dal, their mother is Mari Dal, and their nephews and niece are Snerting, Joste and Mette-Mari Dal.
• Follow That Car: In Legenden om Atlant-is, the brothers try to follow the villain's car... By jumping into a trolley and telling it's driver to "follow that car". The trolley driver actually tries his best but predictably loses the villains rather quickly.
• Foregone Conclusion: Charles XII is killed. Turns out he managed to avoid the bullet meant for him, but accidentally shot himself immediately afterwards.
• Format-Specific Joke: On the music album Brødrene Dal Spektralplate, The Narrator has two monologues that relies on the listener playing the album on vinyl for the jokes to work. The first one has him complaining about getting dizzy because of the spinning record, the other has him referring to a telephone number that you can find "to the right of the round hole in the middle". The monologues are omitted from a CD compilation of KLM songs, but are included on the streaming version of Spektralplate.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: The final episode of Brødrene Dal og Spektralsteinene ends with an elaborate, ten-minute chase scenes between parties interested in obtaining the vial of Kurium 82.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Spoofed hilariously in a time travel episode where Roms ends up in a archetypical western town, and orders a non-alcholic beer at the local saloon. The regulars all laugh at him, and the bartender exclaims: "Here, stranger, we drink nothing but skimmed kefir!!^note a fermeted milk drink. Then the regulars force him to drink several rounds.
  • In Legenden om Atlant-is, the brothers ask for a bottle of champagne to celebrate. When they receive what appears to be a bottle of soda pop, the waiter explains them that since this is a kid's show, they had to change the label.
• Genie in a Bottle: One appears in the second series, granting Brumund three wishes. None of them actually help the plot along in any way... but the fourth wish that Brumund manages to trick the genie into granting (largely by pretending that it was actually Gaus who made the wish) does.
• God Guise: In Vikingsverdets Forbannelse, Brumund pretends to be Odin in order to get Fimbul and the vikings to spare his brothers. Since he's currently talking to them via a video call and as such appears as a "huge image in the sky," (and with some quick-change disguises and impressions), he manages to gonvice them that he really is a god.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Professor Ernst Muffens, conniving scoundrel though he may be, still respects the confines of a kid-friendly show and acts accordingly. After a particularly big rant, he even casually Breaks the Fourth Wall to Lampshade this fact, telling the viewer that normally he would have used much stronger language, but he won't because he knows children are watching this show.
  • Averted in XII, where an early episode features a group of villains (who unlike Muffens don't actually seem to know they're in a TV series) swearing up a storm, censored by bleeps. After a lengthy rant where every other word has been bleeped out, the boss angrily interjects: "If we don't stop all this swearing, we won't amount to shit!" The word "shit" is not bleeped out.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The Nazis guarding the location of Hitler's secret weapon. They are unable to see through Brumund's Paper-thin Hitler disguise, and after he leaves, rationalize that Hitler must have been wearing a fake mustache all along.
• Happily Married: In the fourth series, Brumund is revealed to have been secretly married for twenty-five years. His wife, Arlene, lives in his room, and for some reason they keep this a total secret — Gaus and Roms don't even know she exists. The marriage, from what we see of it, seems to be happy and amiable, though.
• Historical Domain Character: Mostly Norwegians such as Snorri and Roald Amundsen; where international characters are concerned, they are mostly fictional ones such as Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers. However, there is the notable exception of Adolf Hitler (though he does not appear in person).
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Eh, kind of averted. In Spektralsteinene, they foil Hitler's plan to use some sort of infernal machine for his evil ends. This has no negative repercussions in the future and is implied to be a devastating blow dealt to the Axis powers during the war, so it seems more like a Stable Time Loop situation.
• Horny Vikings: Mostly averted; when vikings appear in the series, their clothes and helmets tend to be fairly historically accurate. The few exeptions to this are parodies: the viking family (father, mother and son) we briefly meet in Sepktralsteinene all wear horned helmets and never take them off, though nobody else wears such helmets. In Vikingsverdets forbannelse which takes place in the Viking ages, the costumes are again historically accurate and the only Viking who wears horns is Fimbul the sorcerer, the Large Ham villain.
• Hotter and Sexier: The franchise is inherently kid-friendly, though the fourth series (which is aimed at a slightly older audience) has instances of some more adult humor — and even one instance of full-frontal (female) nudity.
• How We Got Here: The first episode of Atlant-is opens with the brothers in a reindeer-drawn sled, being chased by wolves. After a couple of minutes, the Narrator speaks up, asking the viewers if they're not wondering how the brothers got into this situation. We then flash back to earlier to get the answer.
• Hurricane of Puns: Covering the entire pun spectrum (no pun intended), from groan-inducing to disarmingly covert ones.
• Interactive Narrator: Gets increasingly so with each series.
  • The first series has him as a pretty standard voiceover narrator who is never acknowledged by the characters.
  • In the second series, he starts making on-screen appearances, meeting the brothers for the first time in the last episode, surprising them because they had no idea they had a narrator.
  • In the third series, he's become a fully-fledged character who often interacts with the brothers both when he's doing the voiceover and when he makes onscreen appearances.
  • And in the fourth series, he's got his own Running Gag subplot going, where he's trying to cash in on the series' success (writing his own unauthorized biography about the brothers, trying to make a reality TV show about them, selling clothes and effects with their names and images).
  • In the movie, however, he's back to being an observer who doesn't interact with the brothers, though he retains his Large Ham qualities and makes several on-sceen appearances to comment on the action. (The lack of interaction is explained by the movie being put together by tapes of a "hitherto unknown" expedition the brothers went on, and that the Narrator missed that particular expedition because he was sick — and so he makes up for it by watching the movie along with the audience and providing exposition and commentary.)
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The narrator constantly. At the end of the first series, when The Unreveal is presented, the three brothers, or actors (who also wrote the script), look straight into the camera and bursts into laughter in an understated Take That, Audience! moment. And that is the end of the series.
• Lemony Narrator: The Narrator, especially noticable in the Cliffhanger endings.
• Large Ham: The Narrator is one of the most legendary Norwegian hams, ever. Professor Ernst Muffens (played by Lars Mjøen) deserves the label as well — given that Mjøen usually played the Straight Man in most KLM productions, he takes full opportunity to ham it up here.
• Mad Scientist: The brothers' friend, Professor Bodil Surkle-Fæhrt, is a benevolent version. She's definitely not all there, some of her inventions are either bizarre or useless, and she's a Lethal Chef to the extreme, but her inventions also come in handy a number of times.
• Mineral MacGuffin: The brothers are in search of Kurium 82 in this form, however, they ultimately obtain it in its pure, distilled liquid form.
  • The eponymous Spectral Stones are this, as they power the time machine and almost each episode is about the brothers looking for the next stone to take them sometime new. Near the end it appears that the aliens had them gather the stones for their own ends.
• Nephewism: Lampshaded and mildly parodied with Joste, Snerting and Mette-Mari, whose parents are never identified. Gaus, Roms and Brumund do know that the kids are their nephews and niece but aren't certain who the parents are, and are too embarrassed about it to outright ask. The kids themselves are no help at all when the uncles subtly try to figure out just how they're related.
  Gaus: How — how are your parents these days?
  Mette-Mari: Oh, fine.
  Roms: And your father, he's still... uh... [makes some vague hand gestures] ...doing that thing he was doing back when he... [makes more vague hand gestures] That is, if he ever did...?
  Joste: The same old, yeah.
  Brumund: And you still live in — at the — that place where you used to, outside the —
  Snerting: Yep, same place we've always lived. Nothing new there.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • In Karl XII's gamasjer there appears a pirate character known as Kabel-Satan.^note any similarity to beloved children's figure Captain Sabertooth ("Kaptein Sabeltann") is purely coincidental. For one thing, Kabel-Satan is only a lieutenant and hasn't made the rank of Captain yet. Also worth noting is that Kabel-Satan is also a slang for penis.
  • The king in the same series remains unnamed for the entire series, though he does not resemble reigning king Harald V at all.
  • Also Trygve Hoffnar, a parody of Trygve Hegnar, a Norwegian millionaire who argues for lowered taxes for the wealthy. Hoffnar is constantly pronounced Hoffnarr, "court jester" in Norwegian.
• Nice Guy: The Swedish king turns out to be completely unrelated to the plot to make Norway Swedish, and he even thanks the brothers for preventing it.
  Løvenskjoldsvei: Your majesty, everything I've done I've done for the motherland!
  Swedish King: Nonsense! You did it for your own benefit!
• Off Screen Moment Of Awesome: The three Blunderbusses (a lost in translation pun. Musketeer sounds a lot like Norwegian for blunderbuss, muskedunder) apparently fought hundred of the Marquis' best soldiers, all on overtime. At the time, we were following the Brothers.
• Only Sane Man: Of the three brothers, Gaus is the one least involved in their more frivolous activities, and the one least inclined to get the punchlines. This is pretty consistent with Lars Mjøen's role in KLM; he was most often the straight-faced reporter or host that Kirkvaag and Lystad, in more comical roles, could play off of. That said, Gaus does have his Not So Above It All moments.
• Out of Focus: In Vikingsverdets Forbannelse, Brumund is accidentally left behind in the present as Gaus and Roms travel to the Viking age, and as such he has a much smaller role than his brothers, only interacting with them via "video calls to the future." The reason for this was that during the run of the original stage play, Trond Kirkvaag couldn't appear on stage with the others due to health problems, so instead he filmed his scenes which was then projected onto a screen for the actors on the stage to "interact" with. By the time the play was turned into a movie, Kirkvaag had passed away and so naturally couldn't record any more scenes.
• Overly Long Gag: Sometimes, though most would agree a majority of them pay off.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In the third series, Roms and Brumund disguise themselves by swapping hats.
• Police Are Useless: The cop in XII immediately dismisses a possible missing persons case by assuming that the teenagers just smashed a window by accident, then ran away. He also informs the trio that there are two cops patroling all of Oslo, and that's when they have extra security for the weekend.
• Power Trio: Brødrene Dal, as well as their nephews and niece.
• The Professor: The first, second and fourth series all feature a different Professor character in a supporting role, though they all have very different levels of expertise and fulfil different roles:
  • Professor Kurt Drøvel in the first series is mainly important as the famous explorer who got lost years ago and whom the brothers are trying to find. Exactly what sort of professor he is, is never explained, though he seems to have had some scientific knowledge.
  • Professor Ledwin Slatters from the second series is primarily a genealogist but he also has a strong interest and competence within the medical sciences. His main goal is to find a way to extract the rare mineral Kurium 82, which he thinks can cure the common cold.
  • Professor Bodil Surkle-Fæhrt from the fourth series is, in addition to being the only female Professor, also the only one of them who's a traditional Mad Scientist. She switches between being a Bungling Inventor and a Gadgeteer Genius (her inventions all work, but a number of them are pretty useless).
• Pungeon Master: The Narrator concocts some truly unforgettable ones in Professor Drøvels hemmelighet. Although really, most characters are guilty of this at one point or another.
  • One particularly memorable one is from Spektralsteinene, when pondering where the Brother's house has gone:
    Narrator: Has it been taken by the police and placed under house arrest?
• Punny Name:
  • A staple not only of Brødrene Dal, but KLM as a whole. Notably, the brothers' names when combined with their last names are the names of Norwegian locations. This goes for their relatives, as well. In fact, the official KLM fanclub allows members to create their own fictional Dal relative.
  • Although really, everything KLM ever made is rife with this. You might say it's one of their specialties...
  • Ernst Muffens in "Atlant-Is" is a play on the Norwegian phrase "noe muffens", which means something shady.
• Rule of Funny: And we wouldn't have it any other way.
• Running Gag: Ever so often. The first series had doors standing alone in the middle of nowhere. Usually, one character passed through the door (with the river and main plot on the one side of it), and entered a street in Oslo, a shop of some kind, and in one particular case - a church! A variation of this was a painter who painted a TV set, pressed the button, and turned on the telly. All this was to show completely unrelated skits of classical KLM staple.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Parodied and taken to absurd lengths in Legenden om Atlant-is, where Gaus uses it to distract Ernst Muffens and his two henchmen:
  Gaus: (hiding) Noise! Noise!
  Muffens: Did you hear a noise, guys?
  Hroar: I heard two noises!
  Gaus (still hiding) Another noise!
  Muffens: I heard another noise! Someone must be out there!
• Scare Chord: The melody snippet heard whenever the episode ends on a Cliffhanger still strikes fear into the hearts of all who remember it: DUN-DUNDUN-DUN-DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN! (Or, alternately, DUNDUN-DUNDUN-DUN-DUNDUN.)
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: In Spektralsteinene. While there was no musical maze-of-doors chase, there was, (un)fortunately, enough eerie horror to go around.
• Self-Parody: Frequent — KLM parody everything, including themselves, and the later series often subvert and parody the convensions of the earlier series. Quite often, when the brothers made cameo appearances in other KLM productions (whose target audience was somewhat older) they would have a parodic edge to them, with more overtly adult jokes.
• Shout-Out: The Spectral Stones episode set in the Wild West has Roms encountering an old gunslinger who teaches him how to use guns properly. The problem is, he is only steady on one hand - the other hand is shivering and therefore useless. This, of course, shouts out to the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles. The old man could argually be Jim at a late point in life.
• Signature Headgear: As depicted in the trope picture, they each have their own, distinctive hat. Brumund's hat, namely a pith helmet, features a distinctive, motorized propeller strong enough to be used as a makeshift boat motor.
• Sketch Comedy: Both Professor Drøvel and Spektralsteinene frequently segue off into tangential, often absurdly unrelated sketches, while subsequent installments attempt to follow the story closer, relegating nearly completely unrelated sketches to episode beginnings (and endings).
• Small Name, Big Ego: The Narrator. He's got confidence and ego in spades, but is frequently — particularly in the fourth series — shown to be somewhat of a loser.
• Straw Vegetarian: Parodied with Brumund who's a "vegg-til-vegetarianer"(wall-to-vegetarian). But he's seen to eat fish and possibly other meats without objections multiple times (Then again, eating fish was seen as being vegetarian by the Catholic church).
• Stylistic Suck: A lot of the special effects look deliberately fake and cheesy, partly as a budget thing and partly for comic effect. It's especially prominent in the first series, but happens every now and then in the subsequent ones as well.
• Team Chef: It's usually downplayed, but Roms is usually the one who does the cooking. The novelization of the first series expand a little on this, revealing that while he's a very good cook, he often can't resist experimenting a little when cooking — and the results of the experiments swing between being delicious and disgusting.
• Those Wacky Nazis: The Nazis featured in Spektralsteinene flip-flop between this (see above) and a more realistic, possibly even chilling portrayal.
• Time Travel: A staple of the franchise. The second and fourth TV series both heavily featured time-travel, as did the stage play/movie.
• Twist Ending: The giant egg the brothers find in Professor Drøvel actually contains... Professor Drøvel himself, who is now acting like a chicken.
• Unobtainium: Kurium 82.
• The Unreveal: Professor Drøvel shows up at the end of the first series, unable to make anything but "cluck-cluck" noises. Thus, we never get to know what his secret actually was. The look from the brothers in the final shot intend they (as creators of the series) had it planned all along.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: In the "haunted house" episode of Spektralsteinene, after they decide to work on a plan to catch the ghost:
  Narrator: For the rest of the day, Gaus, Roms and Brummund Dal kept themselves busy. Of course, I cannot reveal what they were doing, in case the ghost should be watching this show.
• Verbal Backspace: The doctor in the viking era gives the viking pills, and tells him
  Doctor: Just take two of these three times a day, and call me tomorrow if you don't get worse... uh, better.
• Visual Gag: A whole lot. Perhaps the most well-known is the sarcophagus shaped like a Moomin; in Norway, their name is very similar to the word for "mummy."
• Vocal Evolution: The Narrator's voice gets notably more high-pitched and energetic over the years. In the first series he sounds like a fairly low-key barytone, but by the third series he's a much more excitable and emotional tenor.
• We Sell Everything: A local gas station (and popular 50s greaser hangout for... some reason) has all the doodads, thingamajigs and whirligigs needed to build a sophisticated piece of alien time travel technology, apparently. The one thing they don't sell is... gas.
  Manager: We stopped selling gas ages ago. It got too expensive. Now we're just a station.
• World of Pun: All four series revel in all sorts of punning, ranging from the very obvious and stupid, to the very clever and sophisticated.
• Wacky Wayside Tribe: Arguably most episodes involve the brothers running into one. Bjerkestammen are a very literal example ending in being Captured by Cannibals.

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