Gotland pony or Gotland russ is an old Swedish pony breed. Gotland ponies are claimed to descend from Tarpans that lived on the small island of Gotland that is on the South-Eastern coast of Sweden right after the last ice age. The Gotland pony is the only breed of pony native to Sweden.
(Source: Wikipedia. Click on the link to read the full article.)
For Good Fences
There are lots of chaotic roadworks going on in our town at the moment.
I haven’t got a clue what they think they are doing here. Possibly a roundabout? - since this is one of the few crossroads in town that doesn’t have one yet…
At the moment, it’s just a place of Big Confusion for drivers as well as pedestrians. Fences in all directions, road signs and traffic lights lying on the ground…
It seems even the police have got so tired of the traffic situation that they’ve decided it ‘s easier to use horses rather than cars… Or?
It was a nice Sunday afternoon for a horse-back ride for sure, but I was still a little confused by all the police in town this day, both riding and driving. (I didn’t take a lot of photos of the police cars but they seemed to be everywhere; as were their horse-riding colleagues.)
Look closely at the photo above, and in the background between the horses you see the non-violence sculpture (a gun tied in a knot) in a park named in honour of Anna Lindh, Swedish minister of foreign affairs who was assassinated in 2003 (in Stockholm).
Besides the fact that the town was swarming with police, everything looked very peaceful. On a Sunday afternoon, only one department store in the town centre is open. Some people were enjoying the sun at the outdoors cafés and restaurants by the river, but nothing special seemed to be going on… Except for…
… the police riding round and round… Which is not an everyday sight in our town. Mounted police are usually only seen at special events.
So the only thing I could think of was that maybe there had been something that I had missed? But if it was over, why on earth were the police still hanging around?
Not until I decided to take the bus back home did I finally get a clue, from a conversation I happened to overhear on the bus. It was national league football night, with a game starting in a couple of hours. Our team (Elfsborg) playing a team from the capital (AIK). Evidently, what the police were waiting around for were hordes of fanatic football supporters arriving and making their way through town to the arena…
I checked the newspaper the next day, but no major dramas reported, only that our team won by 1-0.
Have to confess – I never really understood sports… ;)
Looking through some photos from last year I found these, which I think I never got round to blogging. The field where I saw the horses in September 2011 is across the road from the country church yard where my parents’ grave is.
If you want to see more photos from the countryside around there, also visit my Picture Book post today (Friday My Town Shoot Out – Rule of Thirds).
This post is linked to Friday Fences # 29
At the Harvest Festival I attended on Saturday, there was also horse-riding in the park for the children. Or should that be pony-riding? In my humble opinion a pony should be smaller, but I’m not really sure…
Tried to look for a definition in Wikipedia, but it was not helpful. It seems there are some ponies called horses, and some horses called ponies; so never mind!
I don’t think I ever rode either a horse or a pony – and I’m not intending to start now. I think I read a few books about them when I was ‘that age’ (when other girls actually took up riding); that’s about as far as my interest in horses ever went. I still prefer looking at them from some distance ;)
For ABC Wednesday
A Dalecarlian horse (Swedish: Dalahäst) is a traditional carved and painted wooden horse from the Swedish province of Dalarna. The earliest references to wooden horses for sale are from 1623. Originally it was a children’s toy and usually unpainted; in the early 19th century it became common to paint it in a single colour, and later also to decorate it in the traditional kurbits style (a kind of folk art from this part of the country). Today the colourful wooden horse is a symbol not only for Dalarna but for Sweden in general; it is a very typical souvenir for tourists to bring back home.
Dalecarlian horses come in different colours and sometimes with distinguishing features depending on where they are produced. The most common kind is bright red with kurbits style harness.
Mine (above) has the name Mora is painted on the front: that’s the name of the town in Dalarna where it was made and/or bought. I seem to remember I got it from my parents when they had been away on a holiday trip without me (leaving me to stay with my grandparents). The clock (a model of a longcase clock also called a Mora clock) was most likely bought on the same trip, and from my photo album I can date that as coming into my possession at Christmas 1961 (when I was six years old).
However, what inspired me to this blog post was some works of contemporary art that I found recently on an outdoors wall at a hotel/restaurant in town:
This is just so not how we are used to seeing our sturdy carved wooden horses. I found the mix of Dalecarlian horse and ‘Wild West’ quite amusing. But I guess to see the fun of it you really have know the original. Our traditional wooden horses are always standing so very steadily on their four stout legs – there is not even a hint of movement in them. To see them galloping about really messes with the mind!
