Giuseppi Acerbi, part 2

(Giuseppi liked to throw open the door and surprise the sauna bathers, but could hardly manage to

stick around.)

“My astonishment was so great that I could scarcely believe my senses, when I found that those people remain together, and amuse themselves for the space of half an hour, and sometimes a whole hour, in the same chamber, heated to the 70th or 75th degree of Celsius. The thermometer, in contact with those vapours, became sometimes so hot, that I could scarcely hold it in my hands.”

(Note to self: bring gloves to hold onto the thermometer!)

“The Finlanders, all the while they are in this hot bath, continue to rub themselves, and lash every part of their bodies with switches formed of twigs of the birch-tree. In ten minutes they become as red as raw flesh, and have altogether a very frightful appearance.”

(Check the birch switches in his etching — they look wicked! And notice that one woman tends the fire and water buckets, fully dressed.) 

“In the winter season they frequently go out of the bath, naked as they are, to roll themselves in the snow, when the cold is at twenty and even thirty degrees below zero. They will sometimes come out, still naked, and converse together, or with anyone near them, in the open air.

“If travelers happen to pass by while the peasants of any hamlet, or little village, are in the bath, and their assistance is needed, they will leave the bath, and assist in yoking, or unyoking, and fetching provender for the houses, or in any thing else without any sort of covering whatever, while the passenger sits shivering with cold, though wrapped up in a good sound wolf’s skin. There is nothing more wonderful than the extremities which man is capable of enduring through the power of habit.

“The Finnish peasants pass thus instantaneously from an atmosphere of 70 degrees of heat to one of 30 degrees of cold, a transition of a hundred degrees, which is the same thing as going out of boiling into freezing water! and what is more astonishing, without the least inconvenience; while other people are very sensibly affected by a variation of but five degrees, and in danger of being afflicted with rheumatism by the most trifling wind that blows.

“Those peasants assure you, that without the hot vapour baths they could not sustain as they do, during the whole day, their various labours. By the bath, they tell you, their strength is recruited as much as by rest and sleep. The heat of the vapour mollifies to such a degree their skin, that men easily shave themselves with wretched razors, and without soap.

“Had Shakespeare known of a people who could thus have pleasure in such quick transition from excessive heat to the severest cold, his knowledge might have been increased, but his creative fancy could not have been assisted.”

“Oh! who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking of the frosty Caucasus?
Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat?”

 

Nikki