Category Archives: 20th century

If It’s Christmas, It’s Time for Swedish Dala Horses! Part I.

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Fig. 1: Inside the Stockholm Dala Horse Store. © Tim Bird / Lonely Planet

 

Professor JoAnn Conrad, a folklorist who knows a tremendous amount about  Northern European visual culture for children, was a Cotsen Research Grant Fellow several years ago.  She got in touch a few weeks ago to ask if I’d be interested in running a blog on Scandinavian picture books for the holidays.  Her idea was to take a look at appearances of the Dala horse, the most famous of Swedish toys, in Christmas books published in Europe and America 1900-1950.  JoAnn always has new, interesting insights about children’s books from this period, so the answer was an enthusiastic yes.  Enjoy this lavishly illustrated essay on ways the modern Swedish and American ways of representing the joys of Christmas to children have coincided.

Fig. 2: IKEA’s “Vinter 2020” Candles, decorated with Dala horses, Christmas trees, hearts, and goats from the online catalog.

The mix-and-match of Christmas paraphernalia, motifs, and images now often includes the Dala horse from the Dalarna region of Sweden. The bright red-colored wooden horses have been seamlessly folded into Christmas consumer lore, not only in Sweden but also in the US, as with these  IKEA “Vinter 2020” candles (Fig. 2), on which horses, houses, hearts and humans (or gingerbread people?) consort with the vaguest of cultural connections. They are just “Christmas-y.”

Fig. 3: Shop where crafts people paint Dala horses on site at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm.

Travelers to Sweden, or even those on layovers to other destinations, have long found it difficult to miss the ubiquitous Dala horses, the touristic “symbol of Sweden” in Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport (Fig. 3).

Fig. 4: 19th-century Dala horse toy excavated in Falun. Photo: Mikael Assmundsson, SVT/ Arkeologerna[i].

 The story of how these small children’s toys made by rural craftspeople were elevated into a national symbol is surprisingly complicated.  Originally the horses were small wooden toys made for children by the foresters in the Dalarna region in central Sweden and sold in local markets.   One such horse from the 19th century, was recently excavated in Falun (Fig. 4).   ‘Falun Red,’ the famous color of Swedish country houses, is  a byproduct of the copper mining process. At its peak in the seventeenth century. Falun had supplied nearly two-thirds of Europe’s copper.  The red paint used on today’s horses is a throwback to the Falun mines, where the foresters worked.

By the late 1800s, the Falun mine was in decline and in the economic fallout, many moved to the cities for work or emigrated to the United States.  At the same time, the “Culture Builders” of Sweden were looking to unify the people around a shared Swedish identity.  In that nation-building moment, the regional became national and Dalarna soon achieved the status as the “Swedish heartland.”  This was enhanced by images of Dalarna by the famous artists who made it their new home–Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, and Ottilia Adelborg (Selma Lagerlöf, author of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, also moved there). Traditional Dalarna handicrafts became tourist souvenirs  whose consumption, decoration, and display invited the urban bourgeoisie to participate in this new expression of Swedishness (Figs.5-6).

Fig. 5: Small child from Dalarna with toy horse. 1915. Foto by Foto Karl Lärka, Mora Bygdearkiv

Fig. 6: Bourgeois Swedish children and nanny with a small Dala horse in the bottom left ca. 1910.

Local Dalarna industries that emerged in the vacuum created by the decline of mining and logging provided these souvenirs.  One was started by the brothers Nils and Jannes Olsson in 1922 in Nusnäs. The factory, still a major producer of Dala horses, began by producing the unfinished wood horses, which were then farmed out to locals for painting and finishing.   The horses were shipped to Stockholm shops for both local and touristic consumption.   As symbols of Sweden, they became increasingly linked with Christmas from the 1890 onward, as can be seen in “On Christmas Eve” [På Julafton] by Karl Aspelin (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7: “På Julafton” engraving after Karl Aspelin from the 1898 Christmas annual Jultomten. This bourgeois family scene shows a little girl carrying a toy Dala horse.

Fantastic Horses and Their illustrators

At the fin de siècle, the twin forces of nation-building and industrialization met in the publishing industry, particularly in Scandinavian children’s print culture.   Authors and illustrators contributed to an ever-expanding market that favored one form over all others, the fairy tale.  Christmas was the busiest time for the children’s publishing industry, many houses putting out their Christmas annuals.  Heavily illustrated and featuring a high percentage of original fairy tales, this periodicals were instrumental in reinforcing Dala horse-Christmas connection (Figs. 8 and 9).

Fig. 8: Cover of a child (or tomte) riding a Dala horse by Aina Stenberg Masolle for the Christmas annual Lilleputt (Folkskolans Barntidnings förlag, 1913-1922). Courtesy of The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books.

Fig. 9: Two covers of children riding gingerbread Christmas goats for the Christmas annual Tummeliten (left: Gunhild Facks (?); right: Einar Nerman). While not Dala horses, they still demonstrate the popularity of this imaginary kind of transport. Courtesy of The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books.

The Christmas Dala horse was also a favorite subject in popular illustrated holiday greeting cards, illustrated by many of the same artists who illustrated children’s books and annuals during the first decades of the 20th century (Figs. 10-12).

 

Fig. 10: Cards from 1920s and 1930s by Einar Nerman (1888-1983)

Fig. 11: Card ca. 1910 by Aina Stenberg-Masolle. Her images, as do those of her contemporaries Ottilia Adelborg and Elsa Hammar Moeschlin often feature vivid, detailed examples of Dalarna costume.

Fig. 12: Card by Elsa Hammar-Moeschlin, who lived in Leksand, Dalarna after her training at the Royal Academy of Art.

Dream Journeys on Magical Horses

A popular Swedish fairy-tale theme was the Christmas Eve dream journey. Perhaps the first such example was Viktor Rydberg’s 1871 Lille Viggs äventyr på julafton [Little Vigg’s Adventures on Christmas Eve, also translated as The Christmas Tomten].  Waiting for his adoptive mother’s return home on Christmas Eve, little Vigg falls asleep, and in his dream accompanies the Julvätten, or Christmas spirit, later to renamed the Jultomten, on his visits to all families in a sled, drawn by four miniature horses (Fig. 13). Jenny Nyström, who was responsible for creating the quintessential look of the Jultomten, illustrated the second edition of Rydberg’s tale (1875).

Another fantastic Christmas dream journey is “Julnattsfärd till Sagolandet” [Christmas Eve Journey to Fairy Tale Land] in the  Christmas annual Jultomten (1899).  In Elin Westman’s illustration, a long procession of children astride their toy animals, including a horse, many painted in the Dalarna style, march towards a castle.  And no wonder! During their long winter night in Fairy Tale Land, the children will be permitted to gorge on candy and sweet drinks  (Fig. 14).

Fig. 13: Jenny Nyström’s 1875 illustration for Rydberg’s “Lille Vigg.” The horses are not Dala horses, but magical ones.

Fig. 14: Illustration for Christmas Eve Journey to Fairy Tale Land by Elin Westman for. Jultomten (1899), 11. Courtesy of the Swedish Institute for Children’s Books.

Author/illustrator Maj Lindman’s 1922 Snipp, Snapp, Snurr och trollhästen [Snipp, Snapp, Snurr and the Magic Horse],[iv] the second in her series about the eponymous triplets, conjures up a flying rocking horse, which delivers the boys to a fantastic kingdom for a visit to a princess.  The characters’ clothing, bears a decidedly 20s aesthetic (Fig. 15).  Neither a Christmas book, nor one featuring a Dala horse, Lindman does refer to the toy in the die-cut pages and binding boards, providing the formulaic structure for subsequent fairy-tale dream journeys on Dala horses.

Fig. 15: Maj Lindman’s 1922 Snipp, Snapp, Snurr och trollhästen. Note the decoration with the dala horses in the illustration on the right. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers, [1930s] (Cotsen 40822)

The boys arrive at a palace on the hill, reminiscent of the one in Elin Westman’s Fairy Tale Land, which is also stuffed with forbidden treats for their pleasure.  Princess Törnrosa in her pink dress meets the triplets and takes them to her garden, where they indulge in cake, candy, waffles, and lemonade until they get stomach aches. When they cry for their mommy, the Princess sends them packing.  After a rather nightmarish ride home, mother comforts her sons with “wholesome” food — milk and sausage sandwiches (Fig. 16).

Fig. 16: Mores scenes from the triplets’ adventures by Maj Lindman.

Fig. 17: From Annie Bergmann’s Dalhasten (1923).

One year later, author/illustrator Annie Bergman’s Dalhästen offered another variation on the magic Dala horse Christmas dream story.  In her picture book, an unnamed small boy receives a wooden horse as a Christmas present from his father, who reminds the boy that the horse is not a real horse. The disappointed boy takes the toy to bed anyway (Fig. 17). In the next opening, the horse, having apparently taken offense at the father’s comment, says to the boy “I will show you that I am a real horse.” The boy then hitches the now very large horse to his father’s wagon and they set off to a nearby palace by hoof, not wings.  They share a constrained tea with a princess robed in pink and take a walk through the garden (Fig. 18).

Fig. 18: From Annie Bergmann, Dalhasten.

The boy and the horse are greeted by his family upon their arrival home and the father sees the “real” horse for himself.  The last illustration shows the boy back in bed, waking up in the morning with the small horse standing by his bed as it was the night before. But now the boy knows his horse is a real horse after all.

The Dala horse was also featured in poetry of the period.  In Einar Nerman’s 1947 illustrated song book Dalahästen och andra barnvisor [The Dala Horse and other Children’s Songs],[v] the illustration for the title song is a visual intertextual reference to the Dala horse in an English-language story Nerman wrote in 1946, which will be discussed in this blog’s second part.(Fig. 19).  Nerman repurposed it from  another “frightfully long horse” he created for his version of a medieval ballad, Riddaren Finn Komfusenfej[vi] (1923) (Figs. 19-20).

Fig. 19: Einar Nerman’s second take on his long Dala horse in Dalahästen och andra barnvisor. Stockholm: Fritzes Bokförlag, 1947. (Cotsen 52035)

Fig. 20: Einar Nerman’s original 1923 concept. Riddaren Finn Komfusenfej. Stockholm: Svensk Läraretidnings Förlag, 1923 (Cotsen 19557)

Another song in Nerman’s collection Dalahästen och andra barnvisor,”Resan till Pepparkakeland” [Journey to Gingerbread Land] bears mention for the way it incoporates  all the elements of the Christmas Eve dream journey, with one change—substituting a gingerbread Christmas goat for the Dala horse.  This song was also based on an earlier picture book, Resan till Pepparkakslandet (1934) in which the children first stuff themselves baking Christmas gingerbread at home, then in a dream overindulge a second time in Gingerbread Land (Figs. 21-22).

Fig. 21: Illustration by Einar Nerman for the song “Resan till Pepparkakeland” in his Dalahästen och andra barnvisor (1947).

Fig. 22: Illustration by Einar Nerman from Resan till Pepparkakslandet (1934).

The Dala horse has certainly won a prominent place in Swedish Christmas picture books:  the second part of this blog will show how this toy has come to occupy a significant niche in  the American popular imagination.

[i] “Gammal dalahäst funnen vid utgrävning i centrala Falun” SVT Nyheter, July 10, 2020. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/dalarna/gammal-dalahast-funnen-vid-utgravning-i-centrala-falun

[ii] From the website Dalahästen: en kulturskatt at http://www.dalahorse.info/index.php/Huvudsida

[iii] Full text in Swedish available online at https://litteraturbanken.se/författare/RydbergV/titlar/LilleViggsAfventyr1875/sida/3/faksimil

[iv] A copy of this is in the Cotsen Euro 20Q 40822.

[v] Cotsen Children’s Library » Euro 20Q 52035

[vi] Cotsen Children’s Library » Euro 20Q 19557

Alumnus Donates Chinese Comic Books to the Cotsen Children’s Library

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A Princeton alumnus made a generous donation of lianhuanhua (Chinese illustrated story books or comic books) to the Cotsen Children’s Library, adding 180 volumes to its growing collection of this unusual format of reading material. Sometimes translated as “linked pictures,” lianhuanhua, which resembles comic book storytelling by combining sequential art and text, was a popular format enjoyed by adult and child readers alike in China during much of the 20th century. It touched the childhood of many generations and is fondly mentioned in numerous memoirs.

Xue Gang Rebels Against the Tang Dynasty 薛刚反唐, a historical novel adapted into lianhuanhua series (donation to Cotsen)

Ren Rongrong任溶溶, China’s most celebrated translator of children’s literature, was born in 1923. The son of a successful business owner, Ren spent a comfortable childhood in Shanghai and Guangzhou.

As long as I was supplied with lianhuanhua and A-fu clay figurines, I would be quite content. I kept myself entertained and asked for no adult attention…My beginner readers were not fairy tales about kittens, puppies, chickens or ducklings, but lianhuanhua stories about Zhao Zilong, Wu Song, Huang Tianba [heroic figures from historical novels] and the like.” (Ren 14-16)

Lianhuanhua works featuring women warriors and Communist heroines

Xu Guangyao徐光耀, one of China’s best children’s writers of the 20th century, was born in 1925 and grew up in a poor village in Hebei Province. The earliest joyful memory he recalled in his memoir was the time when his father, otherwise an often bad-tempered, emotionally distant dad, told stories from lianhuanhua to him and his sister (Xu 2). His sister became enamored by historical women warriors such as Hua Mulan and Mu Guiying, and loved drawing them. “They are all donned in armor, astride horses, carrying spears and flags, their heroic spirits captured on paper” (4)–just like how they are depicted on the covers above (bottom row).

Capitalizing on its immense popularity, individuals and interest groups packaged into the palm-sized booklets not only riveting stories and appealing images but also information and ideologies. Lianhuanhua was utilized to promote literacy, patriotism, and Marxism, to condemn political rivals and class enemies, and to disseminate knowledge and technical know-how. The Communist Party launched a crusade against lianhuanhua in the 1950s after becoming the ruling party of China, weeding out works whose messages were incongruent with orthodox political views.

Chinese children’s books and entertainment began to diversify in the 1980s. By 1990, lianhuanhua in its traditional style had retired to forgotten corners of cupboards, second-hand book markets, and closed stacks of public libraries.

Monkey King stories in lianhuanhua

The donor behind Cotsen’s recent acquisition of lianhuanhua earned an advanced degree from Princeton and prefers to remain anonymous, “in line with Maimonides’ guidance on charity,” as he wrote us. He kindly provided the context of his collection at my request:

I first discovered lianhuanhua as a foreign student studying in Beijing in the 1980s. At that time, the books were ubiquitous, sold in most bookstores and rented out of street-side stalls. I admired the artwork and the storytelling and, for someone whose Chinese reading skills were still rudimentary, the books were an accessible and affordable entryway to a wide range of literature and history. The first lianhuanhua I purchased was a two-volume retelling of a portion of Journey to the West, adapted from an animated TV series. I acquired most of the books in my collection in the mid-1990s from used booksellers in Beijing. Some of them had stalls in weekly markets, such as the one at Panjiayuan潘家园, but most operated on the street, laying their books out on the sidewalk or displaying them on wagons. I bought indiscriminately, attracted often by subject matter and sometimes by the artwork. I had hoped one day to use the collection as a basis for a study of lianhuanhua as a vehicle for popular cultural literacy, but I am very pleased to know that the Cotsen Children’s Library will now be able to make them available to the wider scholarly community, which will make much better use of them than I ever could. (anonymous donor)

Stories about the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), in “Patriotic Education in Lianhuanhua” series

Lianhuanhua featuring fictional and historical female protagonists

Lianhuanhua published for Uygur-speaking readers. The titles include biographical stories of Lenin, Friedrich Engels, and Maxim Gorky, as well as tales adapted from The Arabian Nights.

One type of lianhuanhua was produced by adding captions to movie stills. Before television sets–much less video players–became ubiquitous in China, it offered quite a satisfactory substitute to watching animated graphics on the screen! The Man and the Monkey is based on a movie with the same title, a tragedy about a Peking Opera star who wins fame by playing the role of the Monkey King.

Left: poster of the movie The Man and the Monkey (1983)
Right: cover of the eponymous lianhuanhua based on the movie

Left: a screenshot of the movie
Right: one page from the lianhuanhua

Lianhuanhua is heavy with adaptation, drawing sources omnivorously from novels, opera plays, movies, television shows, traditional oral storytelling, and translated works.

The A-Team in Chinese lianhuanhua (1985), with the protagonist BA (“Bad Attitude”) shown on one page.

From its publication statement it is unclear if the Chinese adaptation of The A-Team was based on the television show first released in 1983 (and subsequently illustrated by Chinese artists) or translated from the comics version of the show published by Marvel Comics. The latter is more likely, because speech bubbles are not common in Chinese lianhuanhua, the way they are in manga and comics.

Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin series in Chinese translation (1984-1985)

A double-spread in Hergé’s The Blue Lotus in Chinese translation

In this Chinese version of The Adventures of Tintin, the comic strips were rearranged to fit the customary size of lianhuanhua. The Chinese edition was published before China joined the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literacy and Artistic Works and the Universal Copyright Convention in 1992. It is unclear if it the translation was unauthorized or had acquired proper rights.

The scholarly value of East Asian comic books as primary source materials has slowly become appreciated. I myself analyzed lianhuanhua stories about the Sino-Japanese War to trace the shifting narrative of the war as presented to young readers. Comic books are the subject of a recent study titled North Korean Graphic Novels: Seduction of the Innocent? by Martin Petersen (Routledge 2019). Children’s literature scholar Yeo-Joo Lim (2012) examined the appeal of South Korean educational comic books in her dissertation, titled Seriously, What Are They Reading? An Analysis of Korean Children’s Reading Behavior Regarding Educational Graphic Novels. Beyond Princeton, another special collection that houses Chinese lianhuanhua is the library of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

With this post the Cotsen Children’s Library wishes to express gratitude to the anonymous alumni donor. First, thank you, as a young student, for embracing Chinese language learning with intellectual courage. Second, thank you, as a collector, for being open-minded to a format of ephemera that was losing its popular appeal. Third, thank you, as a donor, for showing a generosity guaranteed to advance scholarship as researchers return attention to this once hugely influential format of popular consumption.

Princeton’s catalog of lianhuanhua holdings can be found at https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/.

References:

Ren, Rongrong任溶溶. 我也有过小时候: 任溶溶寄小读者. 杭州: 浙江大学出版社, 2015.

Xu, Guangyao徐光耀. 昨夜西风凋碧树. 北京: 北京十月文艺出版社, 2001.

(Edited by Jessica Terekhov)