In the shadow of the dalahorse
Although the dalahorse is used to communicate Swedish affiliation in numerous places across America, the scene is exceptionally dense in Lindsborg, a Kansas town of 3 000, founded in 1869 by settlers from Sweden. Over the years, the dalahorse has been instrumental in the shaping of this town into “Little Sweden U.S.A.”. I investigate the creative ways in which the dalahorse is used when residents negotiate this concept locally.
The transformations of the dalahorse in Lindsborg are intimately intertwined with political processes in the United States. Urbanization and rapid economic shifts in the 1960s threatened to obliterate many small towns in the Midwest. Lindsborg residents met the perceived threats by elaborating on the community’s distinctiveness: its artistic and religious profile and its connection to Sweden. Despite the fact that about half of Lindsborg’s residents lacked connections to Sweden, community leaders eventually made the dalahorse the official symbol of the town. The selection of ethnic background as a theme for marketing a community is a process through which many small towns negotiate locality, and secure a place of their own on the national political and financial map. This process often takes place on the expense at immigrants that are more recent. This is true also in Lindsborg.
In the late 1990s, however, the dalahorse sign in Lindsborg has become subject to local controversy. Residents who do not identify as Swedish-Americans challenge the dalahorse by paraphrasing it and pushing its symbolic boundaries in creative ways. Some residents have put up signs shaped as other animals. Others have adopted the dalahorse to show their support of Lindsborg as place of belonging, but added to it colors or symbols that communicate their specific ethnic identity. Thus, by inventing variations of the dalahorse local residents challenge and debate the concept “Little Sweden U.S.A.”, and draw attention to the complexity and multitude of life in the community of Lindsborg, an emerging visual tug-of-war that I find important to recognize.
