abaya

Wow, that's quite a name change... I mean, Ragnar Sturlusson is straight out of the sagas, and I am sure there are a few of those names still in the Icelandic phone book today (though Sturluson is the correct spelling). Very funny for the Icelandic audience.
Interesting, it actually occurred to me (during the daemon-removal part in the movie) that this could be a reference to genital cutting when the bad guys said, "It's just a little cut," "It's for their own good," etc -- it was only momentarily, but it did come to mind.

More strongly, though, I saw the removal of children's souls and "forcing" them to grow up faster as a possible commentary on/allusion to child slave labor and its consequences... that haunted look that Roger (was that his name?) had when Lyra found him, as if he'd been working in a carpet shop in India and had his humanity stripped from him by the horrible conditions. But of course, the author probably did not intend to communicate that... it was just my interpretation (takes me back to Ruskin's Stones of Venice and How the Other Half Lives, don't ask me why).

__________________
And think not you can direct the course of Love;
for Love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
--Khalil Gibran