I think it was Constance @ Staircase Wit who reviewed a book which had a Dala horse on the cover, and if I’m recalling correctly she didn’t know anything about Dala horses. They’re from Sweden, apparently they’ve  been made for years, a sort of folk art and presumably the money from selling them would have helped  families to survive financially through the long northern winters, in the same way that Black Forest wooden carved figures did.

I’ve had the  horses in the photo above since the 1960s-70s. To be exact the three teeny weeny ones were bought by Jack during the glory days of an educational school cruise when he visited Stockholm and I bought the others myself from bric-a-brac shops and the biggest one very recently from a charity shop. I’ve just looked on Ebay and they seem to be selling for stupid prices, I paid £2 for the largest one just about six weeks ago.  When we visited Stockhom a few years ago the shops had Dala horses on everything, cushions, bedding, T shirts, keyrings, cookie cutters, the usual tourist stuff but we didn’t buy any horses as they weren’t such nice quality as the vintage ones. The ‘outrider’ on the right is a souvenir from St Petersburg when we visited the city a few years ago, he was made in Archangel, a very northerly place and it has always seemed like an unlikely name to me, the young woman who served us in the shop was surprised that we had heard of the place. The horse has a lot of personality though for a wee bit of painted wood.