DALECARLIA (Dalarne, “the Dales”), a west midland region of Sweden, virtually coincident with the district (län) of Kopparberg, which extends from the mountains of the Norwegian frontier to within 25 m. of Gefle on the Baltic coast. It is a region full of historical associations, and possesses strong local characteristics in respect of its products, and especially of its people. The Dalecarlians or Dalesmen speak their own peculiar dialect, wear their own peculiar costumes, and are famed for their brave spirit and sturdy love of independence. In 1434, led by Engelbrecht, the miner, they rose against the oppressive tyranny of the officers of Eric XIV. of Denmark, and in 1519-1523 it was among them that Gustavus Vasa found his staunchest supporters in his patriotic task of freeing Sweden from the yoke of the Danes. The districts around Lakes Runn and Siljan (“the Eye of the Dales”), the principal sheets of water in the valleys of the Dal rivers, are consequently classic ground. By the banks of Lake Runn, for example, is seen the barn in which Vasa threshed corn in disguise, when still a fugitive from the Danes. The people are for the most part small peasant proprietors. They eke out their scanty returns from tilling the soil by a variety of home industries, such as making scythes, saws, bells, wooden wares, hair goods, and so forth. About three quarters of the whole district is covered with forest. Besides the wealth of the forests, the Dales contain some of the largest and most prolific iron mines in Sweden, notably those of Grängesberg. Copper is mined at Falun (q.v.), the chief town of Kopparberg, and some silver and lead, zinc and sulphur is found. In consequence of this the district has numerous smelting furnaces, blasting and rolling mills, iron and metallurgical works, as well as saw-mills, wood-pulp factories, and chemical works.
See G. H. Mellin, Skildringar af den Skandinaviska Nordens Folklif og Natur, vol. iii. (1865); and Frederika Bremer, I Dalarne (1845), of which there is an English translation by William and Mary Howitt (1852). For the dialect, see a paper by A. Noreen, in De Svenska Landsmålen, vol. iv. (1881).
DALGAIRNS, JOHN DOBREE (1818-1876), English Roman Catholic priest, was born in Guernsey on the 21st of October 1818. About the age of seventeen he entered Exeter College, Oxford, and soon after taking his degree he contributed a letter to Louis Veuillot’s ultramontane organ L’Univers, on “Anglican Church Parties,” which gave him considerable repute. Together with Mark Pattison and others, he translated the Catena aurea of St Thomas Aquinas, a commentary on the Gospels, taken from the works of the Fathers. He was a contributor to Newman’s Lives of the English Saints, for which he wrote the beautiful studies on the Cistercian Saints. The Life of St Stephen Harding has been translated into several languages. Dalgairns became a Roman Catholic in 1845, and was ordained priest in the following year. He joined his friend John Henry Newman in Rome, and, together with him, entered the Congregation of the Oratory. On his return to England in 1848, he was attached to the London Oratory, where he laboured successfully as a priest, with the exception of three years spent in Birmingham. Dalgairns was a prominent member of the well-known “Metaphysical Society.” He died at Burgess Hill, near Brighton, on the 6th of April 1876. During the Catholic period of his life, Dalgairns wrote The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with an Introduction on the History of Jansenism (London 1853); The German Mystics of the Fourteenth Century (London, 1858); The Holy Communion, its Philosophy, Theology and Practice (Dublin, 1861).
A list of his contributions on religious and philosophical subjects, to the reviews and periodicals, is given in J. Gillow’s Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, vol. ii.
DALGARNO, GEORGE (c. 1626-1687), English writer, was born at Old Aberdeen about 1626. He appears to have studied at Marischal College; but he finally settled in Oxford, where, according to Wood, “he taught a private grammar-school with good success for about thirty years,” and where he died on the 28th of August 1687. He was master of Elizabeth school, Guernsey, for some ten years, but resigned in 1672. In his work entitled Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man’s Tutor (Oxford, 1680), he explained, for the first time, the hand alphabet for the deaf and dumb, though he does not claim to have invented this method of communication. Twenty years before the publication of his Didascalocophus, Dalgarno had given to the world a very ingenious piece entitled Ars Signorum (1661), dividing ideas into seventeen classes, to be represented by the letters of the Latin alphabet with the addition of two Greek characters. Among the Sloane manuscripts are several tracts by Dalgarno, further elucidating his system of universal shorthand. Leibnitz on various occasions alluded to the Ars signorum in commendatory terms.
The chief works of Dalgarno were reprinted (1834) for the Maitland Club.