Iofur Raknison

Iofur Raknison is a panserbjￃﾸrn---an armor-wearing, intelligent polar bear in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. He appears prominently in the first book, Northern Lights. Iofur Raknison is the king of all the panserbjￃﾸrne and ruler of Svalbard, but wishes for more. He wants to be the equal of a human---to have a dￃﾦmon and be baptized a Christian. To this end, he has commanded the bears to build a palace of stone, and induced them ... more

Iofur Raknison is a panserbjￃﾸrn---an armor-wearing, intelligent polar bear in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. He appears prominently in the first book, Northern Lights. Iofur Raknison is the king of all the panserbjￃﾸrne and ruler of Svalbard, but wishes for more. He wants to be the equal of a human---to have a dￃﾦmon and be baptized a Christian. To this end, he has commanded the bears to build a palace of stone, and induced them to wear gold and silver ornaments---ornaments that they had traditionally despised as beneath them. Iofur has a secret: the fact that he killed his own father---a fact that the other bears do not know. Lyra Belacqua divines this with the use of her alethiometer, while convincing Iofur that she is the daemon of Iorek Byrnison, an armored bear driven into exile by Iofur for opposing his claims. Her knowledge convinces Iofur that she is telling the truth about being a daemon, and his will to believe that he, too, can have a daemon allows Lyra... less