Mora

People have lived around Mora since about 4000 BC, drawn by its position between Lake Siljan and Orsa Lake, where the Österdal River enters Siljan. The oldest buildings found date from the 7th century, finds from around 1000 AD point to a rich culture of fur hunting, bog-iron working and fishing, and the name, from a dialect word for dense forest on damp land, appears in writing in 1325. The parish was established in the 13th century, and its church served all of northern Dalarna.

Mora's place in national history comes from late 1520, when the young Gustav Vasa stopped here to raise a rebellion against the Danish forces occupying Sweden. The people first refused him, then changed their minds, and according to the legend two men from Mora, Lars and Engelbrekt, skied after him and caught up with him at Sälen as he headed for Norway. The rebellion succeeded and Vasa became king. In the 17th century the town was the scene of the Mora witch trial.

Famine in the 18th century drove many people to Stockholm and southern Sweden, where they learned new crafts; returning home, they built up cottage industries making clocks, sewing machines, knives and water taps. The Gustavian Mora clock was made from the late 18th century through most of the 19th, and knives and taps are still made today. In 1922 the first Vasaloppet was run from Sälen to Mora, with 119 starters.

To many Swedes, Dalarna is the essence of the country, and Mora contributes much of that image. The Dala horse, carved and painted with kurbits decoration since the 17th century, is made in the workshops of Nusnäs nearby. The painter Anders Zorn, born in the village of Utmeland just outside the town, made Mora his home; his house, museum and collected farm buildings are now the state-run Zorn Collections.

Midsummer is the central festival. As around the rest of Lake Siljan, people dress in folk costume, raise maypoles, play traditional music and dance. The church, dedicated to Saint Michael, gave the town its coat of arms, adopted in 1946 from the statue of Michael and the dragon by its gate. Many members of the folk band Francis come from Mora.

Sport defines the winter. The Vasaloppet, the oldest cross-country ski race in the world and the one with the most participants, ends here each March under the motto "In our fathers' footsteps, for future victories", and Cykelvasan, a summer cycling race, uses its course. Mora IK plays ice hockey in the second tier, and Leksand, across the lake, is its arch-rival. The town hosted the 1984 World's Strongest Man and the 2007 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.

Mora had about 11,000 inhabitants in 2010, and the municipality about 20,400 in 2026. The town never held the title of city before the local government reform of 1971, but with more than 10,000 people it is now counted as one by Statistics Sweden.

Crafts and industry remain at the heart of the economy. Mora knives, small fixed-blade sheath knives, are made in the town, where the Frosts and KJ Eriksson companies merged their brands under Mora of Sweden, later renamed Morakniv; water taps are still produced, and the steel company Ovako has a plant in the town. Tourism adds the summer lake season, Midsummer and the Vasaloppet week at the start of March, which draws more than 48,000 participants across all its ski events.

The town sits where the Dala Line from Stockholm ends and the Inland Line crosses it, and the northern part of the municipality marks the beginning of the Scandinavian mountains. Life follows the seasons: the lake in summer, the hockey season from September to March, and skiing through the winter.

Mora's food is the food of rural Dalarna and of Sweden as a whole. Everyday eating is husmanskost, traditional home cooking based on local ingredients such as pork, fish, potatoes, root vegetables, cabbage and berries, with pea soup, herring and meatballs with brown cream sauce and lingonberry jam among the classics. Breakfast is often open sandwiches on crispbread, and many meat dishes are served with lingonberry jam.

The town's own food tradition belongs to the Vasaloppet. Blueberry soup, blåbärssoppa, is the energy drink of choice for skiers on the 90 km course, and a cup is included with entry to the Vasaloppet museum. Its course commemorates the journey of Gustav Vasa, run in the opposite direction from Berga near Sälen to Mora, and the finish on Vasagatan is the town's best-known landmark.

Drinks have a local side too: a small family-owned brewery in Mora makes beer, cider, soft drinks and svagdricka. Fika, the coffee break with a bun or pastry, fills the cafés in and around the town, one of which, in Nusnäs, also sells handmade crafts, while an open-air café opens in summer.