Once Upon a Time in the North

Once Upon a Time in the North is a novella by the English writer Philip Pullman, published in 2008 and a prequel to his His Dark Materials trilogy.

The story explains how two of the characters from that trilogy met. Lee Scoresby is a young aeronaut who arrives at the northern port of Novy Odense in his balloon and finds the town under the thumb of a businessman and a politician, and he takes up the cause of a sea captain whose cargo has been taken from him. The help he receives comes from Iorek Byrnison, an armoured bear, and the book is the beginning of an association that lasts, in the chronology of the larger story, for decades. Pullman wrote it as a small book in the manner of Lyra's Oxford, with cards and documents included, and it is set well before the events of Northern Lights.

Pullman said he wrote the story because he wanted to show the two of them as young men, before the roles they occupy in the trilogy.