We left Stockholm today and headed north. GPS is a wonderful invention and sure beats me trying to figure out which way we are going and how that relates to a map. All went well until we hit construction on a major interchange and ended up making the same mistake twice and nearly headed back downtown. Once we cleared the city, driving was delightful. We had two parts to our agenda today. The first was to see the home of Carl Larsson, a famous Swedish painter whose work I have loved for a long time. He was an eccentric character who made a fabulous life of painting daily life.

July 2, 2013

Larsson’s home reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright. The difference was that Carl Larsson http://www.clg.se/encarl.aspx appears to have adored his wife Karin http://www.clg.se/enkarin.aspx and children. His home is filled with paintings of his wife and children. He broke all kind of etiquette by having his children eat meals with their parents/guests and he decorated the walls with their portraits. We saw portraits of all eight of his kids in the house; on doors, walls and in frames. As much as I loved Carl Larsson’s work, I gained a new favourite. Karin Larsson was an artist in her own right and gave up painting when she started having children. However, she turned her talents toward needlework and weaving and created beautiful and innovative designs, many of them in the art deco style. The only souvenir at this house that we bought was a reproduction of one of her weavings!

We continued our travels north after a short ice cream break. Ice cream appears to be the Swedish national food. It is everywhere we go and people eat huge quantities. The man who was a little in front of us in line ordered two scoops of different kinds of hard ice cream in a waffle cone and then had the woman top it off with soft serve ice cream. The next two people ordered the same. I had one scoop of chocolate in my cone and it was delicious!
We arrived at our second destination in Dalarna at 5:30 pm.

We were so happy the shop was still open. We had been worried that our trip to the factory where they make the Dalarna horses would be closed by then. However, they were wonderful. One man started up his band saw so we could see how they cut out the horses and proceeded to make eight blanks in a few moments. He then showed us the processes and, even though some parts of the process were not being shown, we were able to see where all the action happens and we got to watch one artist hand paint a special horse.

For those of you who are not one of my siblings… When I was here the first time, I sent each sibling and my grandparents a little blue or red horse for Christmas. The letter I sent with the package somehow was never seen so everyone got a present without any context. Now, let me provide the context. Historically, Swedish loggers would carve different things around campfires in the winter. They would often carve horses as presents for children and as trade items. The horses became Swedish icons after the Word’s Fair in 1939 and an earlier Expo in Paris. The horses are all produced by hand. The blanks are cut out in the factory and then shipped to home crafters to be carved into the right shapes. They are then sent back to the factory where they are primed, filled so the horse is smooth, dipped in a rich colour and then hand painted. We saw horses in each stage of completion. A special grey horse was made for the Crown Princess of Sweden for her marriage in 2010. My treat was a horse painted the colour of the original horses. Dale bought himself a Dalarna Pig, just to be different!

We then went to Rättvik for our evening rest. The food was wonderful – our third feast of salmon since our arrival. Not sick of it yet . We had a great time walking through the town before crashing. The Internet connection didn’t work for me to post my blog – so you get two today! Tomorrow we head for Örebro.