Mors lilla Olle

In the song, Olle is approximately 4–5 years of age, and therefore does not understand what a bear is.

In September 1850, a toddler named Jon Ersson and his older siblings picked lingonberries a couple of hundred meters from their home in Morbäcksätern outside the village Särna in Dalarna.

A Norwegian newspaper wrote an article about this incident in April 1851 and the author Wilhelm von Braun (1813–1860) wrote a poem about it, Stark i sin oskuld ("Strong in his innocence") which starts with the line "Small boy in a mountain forest went, rosy cheeks and angelic look...".

Alice Tegner was inspired by the poem and as a consequence wrote "Mors lilla Olle".

"Mors lilla Olle" has also been recorded in a reggae version by Swedish Peps Persson in 1978.