Dala horse

Lore & Background

The carving of Dala horses is thought to have started in the village of Bergkarlås, where furniture and clock-making left leftover wood scraps for horse production. Early horses were often unpainted; by the early 19th century, painting them in a single color (white or red) became common. The decoration style has roots in furniture painting, and a local tale tells of a wandering kurbits painter who, asked by a child why a horse was not as beautifully painted as those in his decorations, painted it in his style, a tradition continued to raise market value. In the 19th century, the technique of painting with two colors on the same brush was developed in the Nusnäs area, though it is not definitively attributed to a single individual. The story that Stikå Erik Hansson introduced this technique, later immigrated to the United States in 1887, changed his name to Erik Erikson, and is buried in Nebraska, is not supported by reliable historical sources.

Reader's Guide

The Dala horse transitioned from a children's toy to a national symbol and popular souvenir, especially after being shown at the 1937 World's Expo in Paris and the 1939 World's Fair in New York. Mass production began in the 1930s. Today, each horse is still handcrafted from pine, with at least nine people contributing to its creation. The distinctive shape comes from flat-plane style carving. The pattern is about 150 years old. Nusnäs remains the centre of production, with workshops like Grannas A. Olssons Hemslöjd AB (founded 1922) and Nils Olssons Hemslöjd. The horses are carved from slow-growing pine around Lake Siljan, dipped in primer, sanded, painted by hand using the ripple technique, and varnished. In the United States, production can also be viewed at the Hemslöjd in Lindsborg, Kansas. The Dala horse was introduced to North America at the 1939 World's Fair, chosen by architects Sven Markelius and Anders Beckman as a powerful symbol for the Swedish pavilion. A similar horse, painted by Swedish artist Lars Gillis, was donated to the Swedish American Museum in Chicago; after restoration, it is kept in the museum lobby, with a fiberglass replica outdoors.

Did You Know?

• The earliest written reference to wooden horses for sale dates to the 17th century, though the often-cited year 1623 is not a verified historical fact.
• The two-color brush painting technique associated with Dala horses originated in the Nusnäs area, but its invention is not reliably credited to a specific person.
• A Dala horse appears in the 2003 Norwegian film Kitchen Stories as part of a joke.
• The Dala horse was chosen for the Swedish pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York by architects Sven Markelius and Anders Beckman.

Roots in the Wood Shavings

The craft of carving wooden horses in the Swedish province of Dalarna is believed to have taken root in the village of Bergkarlås, where residents already had their hands full producing furniture and clocks. It makes sense that the offcuts and scraps left over from those trades found a second life as small horse figures. From Bergkarlås, the practice spread through family connections to the nearby villages of Risa and Vattnäs, while Nusnäs, sitting a bit farther away, developed its own independent tradition. The earliest documented evidence of these wooden horses being sold dates back to 1623, making the craft centuries old. In those early days, most horses went entirely unpainted. It was not until the early nineteenth century that applying a single coat of white or red became the norm. The decorative painting that later defined the Dala horse grew out of the same traditions as furniture ornamentation, refined over generations. One beloved local story tells of a travelling kurbits-style painter who, upon seeing a plain horse on a farm, decided to dress it up to match his own elaborate work, and the practice stuck because it boosted the horses' market appeal.

The Hands Behind the Horse

While the carving of Dala horses attracted a large number of whittlers, the painters who brought them to life were comparatively few, making each artist's hand all the more significant. Because the basic shape of the horse has remained remarkably consistent for roughly 150 years and is produced using a flat-plane carving technique, it is notoriously difficult to tell one carver's work from another's. Painters, by contrast, developed highly individual decorative patterns. Though they very rarely signed their pieces, experienced eyes could often identify the artist simply by the arrangement of colours and motifs. One figure stands out: Stikå Erik Hansson of Risa, who in the nineteenth century introduced the still-practised method of loading two colours onto a single brush. He later emigrated to the American Midwest in 1887 at the age of sixty-four, changed his name to Erik Erikson, and was eventually buried at Bega Cemetery in Stanton County, Nebraska. Today, each Dala horse still passes through at least nine different pairs of skilled hands before it is finished, and because every blank is sawed and shaped entirely by hand, no two figures are ever truly identical.

From Farm Toy to National Emblem

For generations, the Dala horse served a simple purpose: it was a child's toy, carved and painted in the villages of central Sweden. An old, unverified legend even claims the tradition dates to 1716, when soldiers loyal to King Charles XII were billeted in Dalarna and whittled little horses as gifts for their hosts. The horse's status began to shift dramatically in the 1930s. Showcasing at the World's Expo in Paris in 1937 and the World's Fair in New York in 1939 put the Dala horse before international audiences and triggered the start of mass production. This was a turning point: the humble farm toy gradually transformed into a widely recognised symbol of Dalarna and, by extension, of Sweden as a whole. It became the souvenir that visitors sought out and the emblem that appeared in popular culture, as small as a joke in the 2003 Norwegian film Kitchen Stories, where a character expecting a real horse is handed a miniature wooden one instead. Yet despite the industrial-scale output that followed, the fundamental identity of the Dala horse as a handcrafted object made of pine has endured, keeping it distinct from purely manufactured trinkets.

A Landscape of Styles

Although one particular Dala horse design has become far more widespread than any other, the tradition is far from monolithic. Each village in Dalarna county that produces these figures has developed its own characteristic shape and palette, and the differences are easy to spot. The Nusnäs horse, for instance, is a stocky, workhorse-like figure, while the Rättvik horse stands lean and upright with a stately bearing. These regional variations reflect the fact that production originally spread from Bergkarlås to Risa and Vattnäs through family ties, while Nusnäs, being more remote, evolved independently. Today, Nusnäs remains the production heartland, home to the well-known Nils Olsson and Grannas Olsson workshops. Grannas A. Olssons Hemslöjd AB, established in 1922, is the oldest company still turning out Dala horses, and Nils Olssons Hemslöjd is close behind. The pine used for carving is drawn from the slow-growing forests around Lake Siljan, with trees selected while still standing and only the finest timber chosen. Since 2000, about forty carvers and painters gather each year at Klockargården in Leksand to display and sell their work, and old-style replicas are produced in numbered, signed limited editions honouring antique originals in museums and family collections.