What could be better than a nice soft birch switch?
About 15 years ago, I talked to Tom, then a young student at Vermillion Community
College in Ely, Minnesota, discovered the Ely Steam Bath*, a public sauna with its own long heritage. He’d
thought the experience might be similar to “sannas” he’d
taken in motels. Boy was he surprised to find instead a rich social
tradition with older Finns, Scandanavians and Yugoslavians.
An
old-timer who’d been a logger taught him about using a vihta/vasta,
explaining
that it increased circulation. Others there no longer used whisks,
though they had at one time. The logger had used alder leaves, and
even showed Tom how to make one. But, the logger said, they only last
a month or so.
Then he showed off his upgraded whisk — which Tom described as “a
plastic pompom thing on a stick.”
Sometime later, I purchased one of my own, intending to try it out.
It’s been decorating the sauna for quite a few years, but now I’ll
change its status to “working.”
I’ll compare my pompom to the leafy whisk I made out of ash
branches and report back — inquiring minds need to know.
Nikki
* For the rest of the story on the Ely Steam Bath, see chapter 27 of Some Like It Hot: The Sauna, Its Lore and Stories. It’s been in (almost) business continuously since 1915, though it changed hands when the original family owner died a few years back. They don’t have a website but can be found on Facebook.
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