Hello from the Nordic country of Sweden!  If you’re not familiar with this totally neat country, you’ll find it north on the globe between Norway and Finland.  During the summer, the sun stays up late and comes up early.  If you’re used to sleeping when it’s dark and getting up at the crack of dawn, then you won’t get much sleep!  This pic of me was taken late at night!

Sweden has beautiful countrysides.
You’ll see lots of red houses just like these – pretty much everywhere.  The flowers here are Lupines.

I took a trip to Dalarna – a very nice area of Sweden and a popular place for people to have summer homes.   This area is known for the world famous Dala Horse.

Here I am reading from Over the Top to students at Noret elementary school in Mora.  As you know, my poems are written in English and I read them in English, although I am able to speak a bit of Swedish.  In Sweden, the primary language is Swedish, however students also learn English and sometimes other languages, when they are in elementary school.
So, these students understood me easily.

Here I am with some cool fans!  And don’t miss the Swedish flag there on the desk – so nobody forgets that Sweden ROCKS!!!  Bummer that my time was short and I had to move on… I do hope to visit again!

Thanks to Elin, Carolin and Frida for setting up this visit – it was lots of fun!

As I mentioned earlier, this area of Sweden is known for the Dala Horse.  The Dala Horse is a wooden horse that has been hand-carved and painted.  The tradition started a long time ago by laborers who, on their free time, would carve likenesses of their work horses out of wood.  Over the years, there have been many different styles and variations in shape.  Every once in a while they discover a new (or old, really) style that’s been hidden for years.

If you happen to have a Dala Horse, then it was probably made in this factory in the small town of Nusnas, just 10 kilometers from Mora.  This factory produces hundreds of horses each day and ships them out all over the world!  The horses come in many sizes and are painted in a special style, which is also particular to this area of Sweden.  It’s common to find wooden spoons, clocks, etc. painted in this style as well.

Here they are painting the horses!  The base color, like red or orange is painted in a room where they pretty much just dump the paint all over the horse and let it dry.  But when it comes to doing the decorative painting, one person paints the whole horse.  Each of the paint colors is laid out in front and the painter just grabs the brush with that color when they need it.  When I visited, the room was very quiet and peaceful without too many distractions.  Be careful not to touch!  WET PAINT!!!

And there you have it – a peek at my visit to Sweden!  I’ll be back!