Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans chugged Atlantis,
and the years of the rise of the Brats of Aryas, there was an age best forgotten,
when kingdoms lay spread across the world like old towels beneath the stars –
and proudest of them all was Aquavera, dreaming on in the godforsaken west.
Hence came the Cimmerian, and there went the neighborhood.

Barbarian, thief, warrior, drunkard, sleazebag.  From the northern mountains he came to
tread the shining dung of the Earth under his booted feet.  Black-haired, red-eyed, with
gigantic hangovers and gigantic girth, destined to sell the jeweled crown of Hormonia.
His deeds would strike fear in the hearts of men, and rashes in the groins of women.
His name was Bernard.

About Bernard the Barbarian

The strips uploaded on this site are not new.  They were originally published in print in the Swedish gaming magazine Fenix from 2004–(present), originally titled ’Birger Barbaren’; ”Birger the Barbarian”.

The first 150 or so strips have also been printed in the Swedish 2012 compilation book The Dark and Hairy Annals of Birger Barbaren.  Some of these appeared in English in the 2015 hardcover compilations The Best of Fenix vol. 1-3.

In its first decade the comic was written and drawn by me alone. Later on I wrote two thirds of the strips; ideas for the remaining third were provided by my daughter Evelina. Later still that job was gradually taken over by her sister Ellinor.

Strips in this online version have been adapted for international readers, with English titles and some alterations to remove various Swedicisms. The name of the protagonist was also changed to better match the original connotations. (As one reader put it, in Sweden ”Birger” is the kind of name you'd expect from your local plumber.)

The Basics

Barbarians in humor comics and cartoons tend to be cast in the same mold. They're big and muscular, stupid, hotheaded and love fighting; the jokes are usually about their tendency to cause carnage at random (but fairly predictable) moments.

The idea behind Bernard was to make a barbarian who's the opposite of all that. He is overweight, clever and sneaky, and always tries to get the job done without putting himself in danger. The world where he lives is full of burly Cimmerians and buxom She-Devils – it just has this one fat bastard who won't play by the rules.

I wanted the comic to be wordless. That his speech balloons use images instead of text was actually a compromise; in my first few strips the characters would just make guttural noises (”Grrr”, ”Snort”, ”Gasp!”), but I soon realized that most of my story ideas required them to be more verbal than that.

The strips tend to contain disturbing amounts of cameo appearances, external or internal references and plain odd details. It's not something I had planned, they would just turn out that way. I don't seem to be able to not put these things in…

Background

The comic first saw print in 2004, but it actually dates back to 1989. To make a long story a little bit shorter, a timeline of its career would look something like this:

1989   ’Birger Barbaren’ is created as a submission – consisting of 4 hastily sketched strips – for the Swedish gaming magazine Rubicon. The editor wants to run the strip but I chicken out, thinking I will run out of ideas for it.  I effectively turn down my own submission and instead give them another comic strip named ’Rubicons handbok i överlevnad’ (”Rubicon's Survival Handbook”).
90s The Survival Handbook has two successful runs, in Rubicon and later on in another magazine, spawning various similar strips inbetween. The chubby barbarian remains unused and, to the general public, unknown.
2000 A Survival Handbook compilation book is released. It has a section about that strip's background, so for completeness I make a portrait of its stillborn barbarian brother which is included in the book. This becomes his first public appearance; at the time we all assume that it's also his last.
2001 Realizing his portrait was more fun to make than any of the stuff I'm working on, I sit down and create a dozen new ’Birger’ strips (including redrawn versions of two of the strips from '89) but cannot find a suitable vehicle for them at the time.
2004 Launch of Fenix magazine, a bimonthly full-color gaming periodical with national distribution in Sweden's largest chains of convenience stores. The magazine features ’Birger Barbaren’ from issue #1, starting with the above dozen strips.
2012 The Dark and Hairy Annals of Birger Barbaren, a full 68-page compilation book, is released in Sweden. It has the same national distribution as Fenix for three months and then remains available in gaming stores.
    I get an assistant. My daughter Evelina, then 4 years old, starts to present me with ideas for new strips. To my surprise some are good enough to actually use.
2013 Three strips conceived by Evelina are published this year. From '14 one per issue is based on her ideas; that's a full third of all the new strips I make.
2015 The Best of Fenix, vol. 1–3, English-language compilation volumes with translated material, are released internationally.  They include modified sample strips using the English name ’Bernard the Barbarian’ for the first time.
2019 Evelina's kid sister Ellinor, 5 years old, also starts to present me with ideas for strips. One strip conceived by her is published now, and another one the next year.
2020 A second compilation volume, The Deeper Annals of Birger Barbaren, is planned for release this year but is indefinitely postponed due to external factors.
2021 I'm now only writing half of the strips. In addition to Evelina's steady contribution I begin running one strip written by Ellinor in every other issue.
    The sisters' roles are reversed the next year. With Ellinor doing one strip per issue I begin to phase out Evelina, who's now in her teens and focused on teen stuff. She has a strip in every other issue until the end of '23, then officially leaves the comic.
2025 This website turns up.

I decided fairly early on that I'd put these strips online, eventually. What I didn't expect was how many of them there would be by that time. Sweden has had a number of tabletop RPG periodicals similar to Fenix over the years, I've made illustrations for several of them… and they've had a median lifespan of around a year and a half.  That's about how long I expected to be doing this silly little comic strip. Instead the chubby barbarian has had a 20+ year run, and counting, slowly becoming the longest-running published project I've ever worked on.

 

About Me


Me creating Bernard in 1989.  I may have done it sitting on the floor.

Åke (pronounced ”ou-keh”) Rosenius, caucasian male, a 1960s kid now gray and bearded. Originally from northern Sweden, I live in a suburb of Stockholm with my wife Sangita and our daughters Evelina and Ellinor. We used to have some fishies but they died.

I've worked as freelance illustrator and sometimes writer on a steady basis since the 80s; as a Starving Artist the first decade or so, later on during off hours from my day job.  Most of my work has been in the Swedish tabletop RPG business, with occasional entries into other markets, and some other comic strips before Bernard the Barbarian. After he was launched I quit my other assignments (but not my day job) to focus solely on him.

 

About Like, American Stuff

Cameo appearances by characters from the works of other creators are intended as parody / Fair Use only.  Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for ”fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
In Sweden, nobody cares.

Should you wish to feature Bernard in a work of your own, go right ahead but please tell me about it – I'd love to see the end result.


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Bernard the Barbarian © Åke Rosenius, all rights and wrongs reserved.