The armoured bears, a race of sentient polar bears who live in the Arctic kingdom of Svalbard. Panserbjorne are master metalworkers who forge their own armour from sky-iron (meteoric metal), which serves as the bear equivalent of a daemon - an expression of their soul. They cannot be deceived because they have no daemons and thus no capacity for the self-deception that makes lying possible. Iorek Byrnison, who befriends Lyra, is a panserbjorn prince exiled from Svalbard.