Seat of Our Pants

One of the truly great Northern Swedish pastimes is the Bastu: a sauna closely resembling the Finnish sauna. Most cold climate cultures have a bathing institution similar to the Bastu, from Siberian saunas to North American native sweat lodges. It’s has a history going back thousands of years, and it also happens to be extremely nice. Here’s an illustrated guide to how we do it at our place:

Chop some firewood. We will need two fires: one for the sauna and one for the water heater.

Get the fire going. At this time of year, we only need to burn one load of firewood. In wintertime it can take considerably more fuel to get the sauna to the right temperature.

This is dad filling a bucket with hot water from the heater. It should be close to boiling, as we’ll mix it with cold water later to wash ourselves. No showers around here, just plain ol’ buckets. Just like 5000 years ago!

Cut down some fresh birch branches and tie them into a bundle. This will be our sauna switch. Normally, we cut the year’s supply of switches two weeks before midsummer, leaving them to dry in a dark place. At this time of year, you can still make fresh ones, so we do that for as long as we can. Soak the switch in a bucket of boiling water.

Sauna time! Begin by pouring hot water through the birch switch onto the hot stones. This will produce a fantastic smell and it further softens the switch.

Keep tossing hot water on the rocks, and whip yourself to your heart’s desire while this is going on. I know it sounds a bit weird, but to the initiated sauna goer this is just a refreshing procedure that leaves you tingly all over and with fresh smelling skin.

Perhaps it’s not the most time efficient way of getting clean, but it sure is fun!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.