I travelled to Dalarna and returned home with a horse. It stands about five inches tall, with a pleasing curve of the muzzle and dainty fetlocks, though an unkind person might say it looks bovine from a certain angle. I whittled it while sitting on a log beneath tall spruces, warmed by the fire that Alfred Blomberg, a local farmer, had assembled in moments. As we flicked curls of pine across the floor with our blades, he told me the sort of things you tell a person while sitting around a fire.
A few hours north of Stockholm, this is Sweden's Huckleberry Finn country. Barnland. Driving here takes you past a flipbook of silver birch and lakes, pines and lakes. The Dalarna region is the gateway to the Scandinavian Mountains, for winter sports; but most come in the summer, melting into forest cabins and villages to hike through woods and swim in lakes.
In June there are midsommar festivals garlanded with wild flowers - mercifully unlike Midsommar, save for the maypoles that stand tall in nearly every village. And at its centre is Lake Siljan, a crater lake formed by a large meteor that hit 377 million years ago, turning the earth here upside down.
Dalarna is where Stockholmers come to reconnect with the landscape, and perhaps to absorb an elemental form of pure Sweden-ness. The horse I carved is a Dala horse: painted orange-red with a colourful bridle and sold in craft shops all over the country.
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