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Symbol of Sweden

I confess that I am something of a fan of the Swedish home furnishings store IKEA, having spent countless hours wandering its shiny showrooms in three different countries (Canada, the United States, and France). As evidence of this, you need only stand in the middle of my house and look around; you can’t help but see an IKEA product anywhere you look.

Although some may decry its mass marketing approach, I like that there is a consistency to the IKEA shopping experience. Whether I visit a store in central France or the suburbs of Vancouver, I know that I will see the same kinds of products, laid out in the same way, according to the same floor plan. This sameness might bother me in other settings, but there is a quirky charm to the world of IKEA that counterbalances the monotony. From its amusing product names to the ubiquity of kitschy Swedish foodstuffs, I always feel like I’ve found a tiny corner of Sweden wherever I happen to be in the world.

Whether this experience is authentically Swedish or not, Swedish design is everywhere to be seen, and in ways that are not always obvious. For years I had noticed that horses, and red horses in particular, were a common decorative motif in IKEA products, whether appearing two-dimensionally on pillows or rugs, or as carved decorative figures gracing elegant bookshelves. I later learned there was great significance to these tiny horses, and about the centuries of history they represent. I thought IKEA was a popular symbol of Sweden, but the Dalahäst (also known as a Dala horse or Dalecarlian horse) is a much more ancient and enduring one. Created in the Swedish province of Dalarna (Dalecarlia in English), the painted wooden horse has become a potent icon of Swedish culture.

Horse Mythology

Horses are an integral part of the history of Sweden, having deep cultural and religious significance. It is believed that horses were first introduced to Sweden around 2000 BCE, when Russian nomads invaded the area, overpowering the local inhabitants with their superior military capabilities—including their horsemanship. Horses soon became a valuable asset in farming and forestry for the region.

The religious symbolism of the horse is long-standing in Sweden; not only was the horse the sacred animal of the As religion of the Vikings, but it was celebrated in Norse mythology as well. Horses were associated with the gods, most notably with Odin, who was said to have an eight-legged horse named Sleipner, given to him by the trickster figure Loki.

When Christianity was introduced to Sweden in the 11th century, church leaders worked to discourage horse worship among the people, teaching that the horse was unclean, as were the practices associated with it: ritual slaughter and the eating of horsemeat. Although the church’s efforts were mostly successful, the people of northern Dalarna, particularly those living around Lake Siljan, retained their ancient connection to the horse, refusing to demonize an animal so essential to their daily lives.

The ongoing struggle between the church and local custom can be seen in two separate incidents from the 17th century. In 1624, Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius of Västerås, the diocese city of Dalarna, gave a sermon denouncing the selling of certain “articles of destruction” in the market, a list that included wooden horses. Forty years later, during a witchcraft trial in Dalarna, the parish priest accused those on trial of using a “baror,” a magic wooden object in the shape of an animal (possibly a horse), to advance the work of the devil. At the same trial, the county constable claimed that the devil himself gave wooden horses to the local children to lead them astray.

Horse Trading

Despite these negative reactions to wooden horses, they seemed only to grow in popularity in the following years. In the 18th century, men working in the forests of Dalarna would carve wooden horses as a leisure activity and give them to children back in the village. By the 19th century, painted wooden horses were a common item of trade, often used by traveling salesmen as payment for room and board on their journeys. Created primarily in the villages around the town of Mora, these horses were painted with a floral design, reflecting the general decorative style of the time. This pattern of decoration eventually developed into the kurbits (or ripple) style of painting, which continues to this day.

In 1939, a large Dala horse was displayed outside the Swedish pavilion at the World Exposition in New York, sparking international awareness and interest in this traditional Swedish craft. Demand for Dala horses has continued, and it has become a popular souvenir for tourists coming to Sweden, and an enduring cultural icon. Much of the demand for Dala horses is fulfilled by two companies in the town of Nusnäs: Nils Olsson and Grannas A. Olsson. Crafted from premium pine timber found in the forests surrounding Lake Siljan, the horses undergo a multi-step process, from felling the tree through hand carving, various stages of hand-painting, sanding, and varnishing. The finished product is stunning, a beautiful tribute to the long and intimate relationship between horses and humans in Sweden.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on September 25, 2006.

Image credit: Creative Tools from Halmstad, Sweden [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve eaten tortellini countless times. It’s certainly among my top two or three favorite filled Italian pastas. Until today, however, I was unaware that the ringlike shape was intended to represent the navel of the goddess Venus. Or so legend has it, anyway. I’m not sure whether that knowledge will enhance or diminish my future enjoyment of tortellini, but I am certain that I’ll never be able to get that image out of my head. Anyway! If you were undecided about which filled Italian pasta to eat today, contemplate your belly button and see what answer…pops out?

Image credit: Algont at Dutch Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0]

The great southern frontier

Several months before my wife, Morgen, turned 30 (that would be… let’s see… mumble mumble years ago), she decided that she wanted to celebrate that milestone by taking a grand trip that would be, in a sense, a sort of pilgrimage. No one has to twist my arm to talk me into going on vacation, especially if it’s to some exotic, faraway place. But I told Morgen that the decision where to go should be hers alone: my only input in the process would be smiling and nodding. “You tell me where you want to go,” I said, “and I’ll be there.” For a while she was thinking seriously about going to Spain and doing the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Then she started talking about Rome. After that, it was Australia, and for many weeks I thought she was leaning strongly in that direction. Then one day that summer she announced that she’d reached a final, irrevocable decision. “Where are we going?” I asked. She replied, matter-of-factly, “Patagonia.” I smiled and nodded and said, “Great!” And then I thought for a moment and added, “Where’s Patagonia?”

For a great while thereafter, virtually every time I told friends or family about our two-week trip, they had the same reaction. “Patagonia? Oh yeah, the clothing brand. You mean it’s an actual place too? Where is it?” Had I myself not been entirely ignorant about Patagonia just a few months before embarking on our trip, I would be incredulous that such a huge place—and one so full of stories—could be unknown to so many otherwise intelligent, educated North Americans and Europeans. Patagonia is in fact chock-full of interesting things—people, animals, plants, customs, natural wonders, and amazing stories—and having had a small taste of it in person, I’m delighted to be able to share some bits of that here on Interesting Thing of the Day.

Where Patagonia Is

Patagonia is the southernmost portion of South America. Its exact northern boundary is somewhat vague, but it begins somewhere in the vicinity of 40° south latitude, or roughly where the Rio Colorado cuts diagonally across the continent. Patagonia extends all the way to the tip of the continent—encompassing, by most accounts, Tierra del Fuego and the many smaller islands up to and including Cape Horn. The western quarter or so of Patagonia is in Chile; the rest, to the east of the Andes mountains, is in Argentina.

Patagonia is an immense region; its area of about 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 sq. km) makes it well over twice the size of California. And trying to describe Patagonia is very much like trying to describe California—do you want to hear about the deserts, the mountains, the valleys, or the coast? The cities or the rural areas? The wildlife or the politics? With so much to describe, generalizations become difficult. One thing you can say with certainty, though, is that Patagonia is sparsely populated—it has a total of roughly 1.5 million inhabitants (compared to California’s 34 million), of which the vast majority live in large towns. Depending on whose estimates you believe, sheep outnumber humans by at least 5 to 1, and perhaps as many as 20 to 1. And one of those sheep contributed the wool for that Patagonia-brand sweater you have in your closet.

The name “Patagonia” was once thought to have been derived from a Spanish expression for “big feet”—a supposed reference to the proportions of the area’s original inhabitants, described by early European explorers as “giants.” But the generally accepted etymology is that the word Patagonia actually comes from Patagon, the name of a giant in a Spanish novel called Primaleon—apparently a favorite of Ferdinand Magellan’s.

The Stuff of Legend

Magellan, of course, lent his name to the strait that separates mainland South America from Tierra del Fuego; he discovered the long-sought passage between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific in 1520. Even three centuries later, though, when Charles Darwin set out on H.M.S. Beagle (under command of Captain FitzRoy), Europeans knew very little of Patagonia or its inhabitants; it was more of an inconvenient obstacle to sea travel than a place one might actually want to visit. The exotic descriptions Darwin brought back—especially his confirmation that the inhabitants were savage giants—reinforced in the minds of many Europeans the notion of Patagonia as being a desolate and forbidding place, far from (and perhaps unworthy of) civilization.

Partly because of its remoteness, Patagonia attracted its fair share of outlaws. Following a major heist in the United States, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out in Patagonia for several years in the early 1900s. Pirates, too, found the busy shipping channels near Patagonia a lucrative source of business. (And, you remember correctly: the Dread Pirate Roberts himself was said to have retired there.)

As recently as the 1970s, English-speaking people in the northern hemisphere knew little of Patagonia. British author Bruce Chatwin almost single-handedly brought Patagonia into the popular consciousness with his best-selling 1977 book In Patagonia, a travelogue of sorts that is part autobiography, part fiction. Two years later his friend, travel writer Paul Theroux, wrote The Old Patagonian Express, detailing his attempt to travel by train from Boston all the way to the heart of Patagonia. These two books have inspired generations of travelers to discover Patagonia for themselves.

Far and Away

Today, Patagonia is a favorite destination for ecotourists and adventure travelers. Some go to see the vast expanses of steppes—desert-like plains that are constantly buffeted by strong winds and support only the hardiest plant, animal, and human life. Some are interested in the impressive glaciers descending from the Andes, or in the millions of nesting penguins along the coast. Still others are interested in the cultural anomalies, such as the Welsh colony of Gaiman, where you can always get a proper tea. And many tourists stop briefly in Patagonia on their way to Antarctica—a mere 600 miles (1,000km) or so south across the Drake Passage. But one of the biggest reasons to go to Patagonia, even for residents of northern Argentina, is its sheer remoteness: it is one of the last places on Earth that can still be called “one of the last places on Earth.”

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on January 23, 2005.

Image credit: Justin Vidamo [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

Charles Darwin was born on February 12, 1809, making today his 210th birthday. Coincidentally, Abraham Lincoln was born on the very same day. So happy birthday to both of you, Chuck and Abe! But Lincoln’s birthday, along with George Washington’s, is celebrated on Presidents’ Day (next week), so today we observe International Darwin Day. Darwin, of course, was responsible for developing the modern theory of evolution and coining the expression natural selection. His contribution to science was of inestimable significance, and as for the religious literalists who still revile him, well…they need to evolve.

Image credit: Julia Margaret Cameron [Public domain]