Skalman is a borrowing of the concept of
Gyro Gearloose into the swedish comic strip
Bamse. He is a
turtle, and keeps an incredible lot of stuff inside his shell. Many of these tools can be very useful when he and his pals Bamse and
Lille Skutt have gotten into troublesome situations. One example is the
portable mini-helicopter which they used in
The red rubin of the elephant temple.
Judging from the episode The magician's red flower it appears that Skalman did some wild things in his youth.
While Bamse and Lille Skutt with time have gotten family and kids, Skalman has stayed single. To a question from a reader about this, Bamse creator Rune Andreasson answered that "not all people are supposed to get a family." It is possible to interpret this as meaning that he devotes his life completely to his scientific research for the good of humanity (i.e. he is a socially incompetent geek).