I’m not saying the Swedes are a morbid people, but the anti-hero of the Swedish morning kids’ tv show is a malevolent 8 feet tall amorphous cat-faced spirit called Sommarskuggan (Summer-shadow)

He binds the presenters’ legs, traps them in nets and covers them in a licorice-black goop called skuggslem (shadow-slime). They’re constantly treading in cow-pat style deposits of the stuff, which threatens to erupt from the earth like a volcano

(Kids TV slime is one thing when dayglo green, and something else when it looks like a Spideyverse symbiote trying to bind with a new host)

The force for good in this summer kids’ TV institution is Vinterskuggan (Winter-shadow). Vinterskuggan rarely appears

I contend that only the nation whose crowning cinematic achievement is The Seventh Seal (top quote: “We must make an idol of our fear, and call it god”) could have created the nightmarish Sommarskuggan for its kids’ TV summer special

See?

Sommarskugan is coming for YOU

Sommarskuggan indulging in an idle wager over a game of chess