Iofur Raknison

Encyclopedia : I : IO : IOF : Iofur Raknison

Iofur Raknison is a "panserbjørn"---an armor-wearing, intelligent polar bear in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. He only appears in the first book, The Golden Compass/Northern Lights.

Iofur Raknison is the king of all the panserbjørne and ruler of Svalbard, but wishes for more. He wants to be the equal of a human---to have a daemon 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 to manipulate him into a duel with Iorek. After his loss of the duel, and his life, Iorek is proclaimed the king, and his first command is that the bears discard their pseudo-human trinkets and tear down Iofur's palace.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.