Urhunden Prizes are awarded by The Swedish Comics Association annually since 1987 to the previous year's best original Swedish and Swedish translated comic book. The prizes are named after a classic Swedish comic book character, Urhunden ("The Doggosaurus"), from around 1900 by Oskar Andersson, one of the pioneers in Swedish comics.
The prize was partly designed in relation to the existing Adamson Awards, which is a general award of merit to a foreign and a Swedish cartoonist. The Swedish Comics Association prize, on the other hand, is linked to a specific book publication.[1]
Between 1994 and 2018, the prize was also awarded in a third category, called Unghunden ("The Young Dog"). The prize went to someone or some people who made contributions to children's and youth comics in Sweden, without connection to any particular achievement in a particular year.[2]
In 2022 and 2023, the awarding of the prize was suspended, while the jury reviewed the rules. In 2024, jury work and the awarding of the prize officially restarted.[3][4][5]