Comments - Setting Character Sets and Collations

I have problem with comparing unicode strings.

: mysql --default-character-set=utf8mb4 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 57932
Server version: 10.0.29-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 Ubuntu 16.04

MariaDB [(none)]> SET character_set_server='utf8mb4';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> select 'var'='vår';
+--------------+
| 'var'='vår'  |
+--------------+
|            1 |
+--------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Why is this true?

These evaluate as equivalent in the default collation, utf8mb4_general_ci

If you change the collation to utf8mb4_bin (in this example just for the connection), this will not be the case:

SET collation_connection = 'utf8mb4_bin';

select 'var'='vår';
+--------------+
| 'var'='vår'  |
+--------------+
|            0 |
+--------------+