Christmas Horses

Advent Calendar / 17 December

… Really?! … Well, the first reaction would be “neigh”… (“nej” meaning “no” in Swedish!) … but on second thought …

These ponies I found in the Christmas market last weekend, and children could go for a ride around the town square.

“In the good old days”, when people went by sleigh to church early on Christmas morning… the sleigh was of course drawn by horses.

Photo from sverigesradio.se

I’ve mentioned before that pastry cutters for Christmas gingerbread biscuits come in all kinds of shapes – including the pig, and the yule goat. Many years ago on holiday in the province Dalarna in central Sweden, I also bought pastry cutters in the shape of horses.

This picture I found on the internet
(easier than finding my own cutters)

The province Dalarna is famous for their wooden horses (in the same shape as the pastry cutters), colourfully decorated with a special kind of folk art, kurbits.

My Dala-horse, and a model of a grandfather type of clock 
from the same area; both painted in the “kurbits” style.

I mentioned in connection with Lucia, that the male participants in the Lucia processions, called “star boys”, are associated with the first Christian martyr, St Stephen. One of the songs often sung by the boys in the Lucia procession talks of St Stephen (“Staffan”, in Swedish) as an ostler or stable boy, taking care of his “five horses”, “in the light of the star”. The origins of this song are said to go back way further than the Lucia traditions and are based on a legend that places Stephen as a servant of King Herod around the birth of Jesus (rather than as the first martyr of the early church after Jesus’ death ~35 AD): seeing the star of Bethlehem he told Herod about it, and thereby aroused the king’s anger.

A medieval church ceiling painting of St Stephen and his horses
(picture from Swedish Wikipedia) ~ 1200 AD

The horse, just like the pig and the goat, also belongs in pre-Christian Scandinavian traditions. The Old Norse god Odin’s horse Sleipnir was said to have eight feet. He could run through the air as well as on the ground, and the stories also tell of him being ridden down into the Underworld to the realm of the dead (reigned by queen Hel). Horses were also used for sacrifices.

Looking at the medieval painting above, I doubt it is quite a coincidence that it can be seen either as two horses, or as one horse with eight feet and two heads, one pointing up, and one down. It strikes me that the painting was probably meant to recall ideas of descending into hell and rising into heaven, borrowing the imagery from the old religion. (A “revelation” that only dawned on me just now. I had no idea whatsoever when I started writing this post that from the ponies at the Christmas market I would end up with references to old Sleipnir…!)

Uno’s Animals: It’s a Wild Life

 

 

Uno often went out into the woods and just sat there observing things; and animals would come up to him and let him get close to them.

His attitude to his own art was that he just “released” the animal shapes that were already there in the pieces of wood he found. He would study the piece of wood and see what was “hidden” in it.

Uno’s Animals: Birds

Uno was 53 years old when he started making wooden sculptures. Altogether he made about 250 of them, big and small. He never sold any of his them. He gave some away, but most of them he kept in a private museum in a barn on his farm. As rumour or his work spread, he got more and more visitors. A few years after he died, the family offered the local folklore society to take over the collection, and a new museum was built next to the village hall. Some of the sculptures have also been exhibited in Stockholm and other cities in Sweden, and even overseas in Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Uno’s Animals: Pigs

Uno Axelsson had artistic ambitions already at an early age, but it was when he began to work with forestry that he found his niche. From 1975, when he began his career as a wood sculptor, until 2002 when he passed away, he created approximately 250 sculptures.

His work was always preceded by careful studies of the object to be recreated in wood. One can only be amazed at Uno’s ability to see a living creature captured inside a lifeless piece of wood and to release it in such unbelievable and striking detail.

~From the English brochure~

This sculpture of a sow and her piglets (in more or less natural size, I think) was carved out of one single piece of wood. This one took the artist 4 months to make, according to the guide at the museum.

A piglet who missed out on lunch (according to the sign)

When Uno first started doing artistic woodwork (which was not until at the age of 53, I think the guide said!) he made bowls, following the natural shape of odd-looking pieces of wood; then he began to carve animal heads on the edges of bowls; and from there went on to do bigger sculptures.

The eyes on his sculptures are not glass but painted with water colours and then lacquered to be made shiny and life-like.

More of Uno’s animals will follow.