Älgen Stolta (in Swedish, "Älgen" means "the moose" and "Stolta" means "proud") was a

moose The moose (in North America) or elk (in Eurasia) (''Alces alces'') is a member of the New World deer subfamily and is the only species in the genus ''Alces''. It is the largest and heaviest extant species in the deer family. Most adult m ...

that became known for participating in a trot racing event in

Falun Falun () is a city and the seat of Falun Municipality in Dalarna County, Sweden, with 37,291 inhabitants in 2010. It is also the capital of Dalarna County. Falun forms, together with Borlänge, a metropolitan area with just over 100,000 inhab ...

, Sweden, in 1907.

History

In the early 1900s, a moose cow (adult female) died, leaving her year-old calf behind. Different sources claim the cow was killed by a passing train, others that it drowned, but they agree it happened near the Dalälven river close to Älvkarleby in

Uppland Uppland () is a historical province or ' on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital. It borders Södermanland, Västmanland and Gästrikland. It is also bounded by lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. On the small unin ...

. Its live female calf was taken to Johan Blad, the foreman at Älvkarleö's railway park. Blad knew a lineman called Anders Gustav Jansson who lived in Älvkarleby and had a reputation for animal husbandry, so he asked for his help with the moose which they named Stolta. Stolta was raised like a tame horse; doing forestry work, pulling carts and sleds with material, and also used to pull a sled carrying tourists between the railway station and the tourist hotel near the waterfall in Älvkarleby. In 1907, at a winter sports festival in Falun, Stolta won a trot race against trained trotting horses over an ice-covered lake. Jansson was afterwards presented with a coffee service: a coffee pot and accompanying sugar bowl and coffee creamer. The coffee pot had an inscription that read ''Minne av Vinteridrottsfästen i Falun 1907 för körning av elg'' ("Memento of Winter Sports Festival in Falun in 1907 for driving with a moose"). The park where Älgen Stolta was kept closed in 1909 as the area was marked as part of the reservoir for a hydroelectric power station. Stolta was moved to the open-air museum of

Skansen Skansen (; "the Sconce") is the oldest open-air museum and zoo in Sweden located on the island Djurgården in Stockholm, Sweden. It was opened on 11 October 1891 by Artur Hazelius (1833–1901) to show the way of life in the different parts o ...

on the island of

Djurgården Djurgården ( or ) or, more officially, ''Kungliga Djurgården'' (), is an island in central Stockholm, Sweden. Djurgården is home to historical buildings and monuments, museums, galleries, the amusement park Gröna Lund, the open-air museu ...

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropol ...

where it was thought she could be better cared for, and her name was changed to "Lotta." After the 1907 race, a rule prohibiting the use of moose as draft animals was added. She died in Stockholm in 1925.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Stolta, Algen 1907 in Sweden 1925 animal deaths Individual deer Mammals of Europe Individual animals in Sweden