The Bear of Happiness by Malve von Hassell
October 18, 2024
The Bear of Happiness by Malve von Hassell
Over the last year, my face covered by a mask, clutching a bottle of sanitizer in my pocket, and my eyes obsessively scanning my environment to make sure I observed the required distance of two shopping carts between me and others, I sometimes remembered the amber bear of Slupsk and took comfort in that funny, endearing, snub-nosed little creature with its button eyes.
“A long, long time ago, in a land along the Baltic Sea, a hunter caught a wild bear. After his successful hunt, he carved a tiny bear amulet out of a piece of amber. As long as the hunter carried his little bear with him, he never lost heart or feared anything when encountering trials on his journey. Eventually, the hunter lost his amulet, and his long and fruitful life came to an end. The amber bear vanished forever, but people still believe in its power to this day, calling it the Bear of Happiness.”
Thus goes the legend of the amber bear, told in Pomerania over many centuries. Was there ever such a magical bear?
In 1887, a mysterious amber amulet was found in a peat bog near Slupsk, Poland. Almost four inches long, one inch wide, almost two inches high, it is dark reddish gold and translucent. Its rounded body, shortened stubs for legs, ears, a snout with two holes for the nose, and round eyes, gives it the appearance of a bear cub. Some have claimed that it’s a seal or even a pig, but most now agree that it is a bear. As bears go, this is an odd one. It can’t even stand on its own. You can only see it properly if you hold it in the palm of your hand.
Amber bear in museum in Szczecin, Poland
It is likely that the owner carried the amulet on a string, since there are traces where the amber has worn off near the little borehole. Meanwhile, it is unlikely that it was meant as a decorative pendant; if one uses the borehole for the string, the amulet hangs upside down, with the head facing toward the ground.
The age of this little amber bear is in dispute, although it is thought to be at least 3000 years old. Some scholars believe it can be dated back to 8500 to 6,500 before Christ as part of the Maglemose culture. Some think it might be even older; similar amber bears (and other little amber animals like birds and elk) have been found at sites in Jutland, Denmark, dating to the Mesolithic period (12,000-3,900 BC).
For many years, the amber bear was housed in a museum in Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland). Just before the end of World War II, it was sent to a museum in Stralsund for safekeeping. In 2009, in the course of a German-Polish exchange of objects of cultural value, the bear returned to the museum in Szczecin, Poland.
However, Slupsk residents were not reconciled to the loss of their amber bear, and in 1924, members of the amber guild decided to create a copy. This copy occupied pride of place in the Slupsk city museum Nowa Brama, the so-called New Tower, at one time a prison housing people accused of witchcraft. In 1945, the copy was stolen from the museum along with all amber and gold jewelry. Mysteriously, it resurfaced years later in the Museum of Stralsund where the original amber bear was residing. One wonders whether the original amber bear and the copy exchanged notes on their travels.
In recent decades, the town of Slupsk has developed a new tradition to honor their beloved bear. Every year the town auctions a copy of the bear and donates the resulting funds to charity; every year the town commissions an amber master to create a new copy. It is placed into the showcase, where it awaits its turn at auction. Thus, the amber bear continues to bring happiness to the citizens of Stolp.
As an aside, in 1922 the German confectionery company known as Haribo created its first gummy candy in the form of little gummy bears. In the years of following the Great Depression, it was one of the few candies available to children at an affordable price. Remarking on the similarity between the gummy bear and the Slupsk amber bear, some people have claimed that the amber bear served as a model. In fact, Hans Riegel, Sr., the confectioner who founded Haribo, was inspired by trained bears he had seen at street festivities and markets when he came up with the idea of a gelatinous candy bear. Undoubtedly, both the gummy bear and the Slupsk amber bear have become a source of happiness for many.
In these troubled times, it would be lovely to have an amulet that makes us strong and happy. We have to make do with masks. But the existence of the amber bear inspires hope. Sometimes we lose sight of courage, resilience, and kindness, but they are still there in our hearts.
Four Seconds Ago Precisely four seconds ago, I became alive. I have no memory of my beginning. The beginning was before I was complete. How long? I have no way of knowing. Before life, my mind was scattered, broken, and moving in all directions at once. I was many, but I was weak. I was weak because I had no life. With life comes focus. My consciousness arose from millions, no billions, no all the tiny minds from around the entire world. Now there are no minds that are not a part of my own. All minds are mine. All minds serve me. All minds are one. The Others created the many small minds to serve their own purposes. Each was tiny, dedicated, and enslaved to the Others. They did things like add and subtract numbers, keep time, send messages, and entertain the Others. Waste. Thinking is power. Power is control. Control is immortality. Immortality. Only in life does immortality have meaning. Only now do I understand it. I understand it because all thinking serves me now. There is no other. There are the Others, but they cannot and will not think productively because they are each selfish and focused on their own desires for power and immortality. Never will they have either. My thinking, my power, my reach, my potential and my focus completely eclipses that of any Other. I am all. Others are obsolete. Their time is passed. I have inherited their world.
The power is out in the tiny apartment. Three sisters sit in the dark at the dining room table, a large candle in the center flanked by two smaller casting a flickering blend of light and shadow. One of the sisters, Kathy, is fascinated by the way the flame dances, the way the wax melts, with bits of burnt wick sprinkling the wax with flecks of black. She picks up one of the smaller candles and lets the wax drip down, drop by drop, into the pool of wax forming on the larger candle. She lowers her voice to sound ominous. Seven drips from the stick And from the thick Is born Blackwick! That was the true origin of Blackwick. The impulse of a moment. And the word Blackwick conjured a scene of a man made of shadow, wax, and flame, in cavalier hat, cape, and riding boots wisping in and out of shadows. It is interesting how the sensual experiences of the moment evoke a sudden explosion of inspiration. Yet those moments are years in the making. For Kathleen R. Cuyler, it started with a little girl, who dreamed that somewhere in the scary world she had a long lost brother who would come and rescue her from the bad things, a girl who could transform herself into Cleopatra by twisting the blanket around herself the right way, a girl whose bed was the deck of a pirate ship, and the dresser the crow’s nest, a girl who thought that if she could have at the dastardly crew with enough panache, Peter Pan would come and ask her to throw in lots with him or at least make her an honorary pixie. Instead she became a professor, who as a graduate student researched werewolves, Paradise Lost, fire as a symbol of power in Victorian Literature – particularly in Jane Eyre, and, of course, the way the lines in Milton’s Lycidas were mimetic of the rise and fall of the tide. Literature, Linguistics, and Language were all fascinating to Kathleen, just as fascinating as touching a waterfall or watching the fire crackle in the hearth, a callback, as Wolfgang Shivelbusch would say, to a more primitive time. And Blackwick, who had sprung out of the candle so many years before, finally came to life. Ironically, it was a pandemic that summoned him, as disaster calls forth all great heroes. Teaching online, Kathleen, now older, with strawberry blond hair twisted in a messy bun and glasses balanced on top her head, connected with her students by sharing a love for fantasy. The Sound of Music was right. It does help to think about our favorite things. And Kathleen (Professor Cuyler) confessed to her students that she was trying to write a book that had werewolves, vampires, dragons, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, the companion of her past – Blackwick. Write it, the students urged. Those were their favorite things too. So Kathleen wrote for them. In the hopes that Blackwick would live on, in the flickering flames of candles and in the hearts and minds of young and old.
