The Dalahäst
A Dalecarlian horse (Swedish: Dalahäst) is a traditional wooden statuette of a horse originating in the Swedish province of Dalarna. In the older days the dala horse was mostly a toy for children, but nowadays it is used as a symbol for Dalarna or sometimes the whole of Sweden.
History
Traditionally a dala horse is painted bright red with details and a harness in white, green, yellow and blue. It may also be painted bright blue or, in the Rättvik area, grey. The somewhat odd shape of the horse is said to be derived from the clocks industry in the region. The horses were originally made of the cutoff corners when making the round clock face.
It was in the small log cabins deep in the forests during the long winter nights in front of a log fire that the forerunner of the dala horse was born. Using simple tools, generally only a knife, woodcarvers made toys for their children. It was only natural that many of these toys were horses, because the horse was invaluable in those days -- a trusty friend and worker who could pull great loads of timber from the forests during the winter months, and in the summer could be of just as much use on the farm. The Dalecarlian horse is said by some to be a model of Odin's horse Sleipner, but unlike Sleipner it does not have eight legs.
The wooden horses are painted in the kurbits style.The earliest references to wooden horses for sale are from 1623 -- nearly 400 years ago. The pattern of today is about 150 years old, and it reflects a style of painting known as kurbits. In the 19th century, Stickå-Erik Hansson from Mora introduced the technique of painting with two colours on the same brush, still used today. The Dalecarlian horse of today is still a handcrafted article, made of pine. At least nine different people contribute their skills to create each horse.
Origins
The carving of Dala horses is thought to have started in the village of Bergkarlas, though the nearby "horse" villages of Risa, Vattnas and Nusnäs were also centres of horse making. The villages were involved in the art of furniture and clock-making, and it is likely the leftover scraps of wood were at first whittled into toy horses for children as a winter pastime.
But the art of carving and painting the small horses quickly flourished in the 1800s, as economic hardship in the region inspired greater production of the little horses, and they became an important item of barter. Horse-making may have started as something to while away the hours during the long winter months but soon the Dala horses were traded in exchange for household goods and their carving and painting blossomed into a full-fledged cottage industry. The rural families depended on horse production to help keep food on the table, as the skills of horse carving and painting were passed from one generation to the next.
The decoration on the Dala horse (the first horses were not painted or were only one colour) has its roots in furniture painting and was perfected over the years. Perhaps the most famous decorator was Mora artist Stika Erik Hansson from Risa, the first of the horse painters to paint with two colours on the brush at one time.
There were the horse whittlers and there were the horse painters - and it was considered a great honor for a whittler to have his horse painted by a renowned painter such as Stika Erik! (Interestingly, in the book "The Wooden Horses of Sweden," the author discovered that this famous Dala painter is buried in a small churchyard in Nebraska after having immigrated to the Midwest in 1887 at the age of 64.) Stika Erik's method of using 2 colours at one time with a very fine brush is still used today.
Välkommen Hus display features the Barbara Glaser Dala Häst Collection which includes 120 hästar from about 1900 to 2006 that are antique, unique, traditional and humorous designs. This collection will continue to grow.