Sauna Shoes & Learning to Weave Birch Bark

 

Promenad Ben Sko Näver (Walk Legs Shoe Birchbark), 1959, Hälsinglands Museum, CC BY
Photograph by Hilding Mickelsson (1919 – 2002), Sweden

My sauna shoes are rubber clogs made in Italy by Calzuro

Birch bark shoes are called virsu in Finnish and näversko in Swedish. Before plastic there was birch bark. If you wanted to shuffle from the house to the sauna on a snowy day, a pair of shoes woven out of strips of birch bark was the perfect solution. Birch trees are commonly found in the boreal forest of the northern latitudes including regions from northern Minnesota to Scandinavia and Russia. In Europe, the trees historically provided abundant material that was sustainably peeled from the trunk and cut into thin strips that were then used to weave baskets, bags, backpacks and practical everyday shoes. Birch shoes, like plastic flip flops from Target, were minimal, inexpensive and easily replaced when worn out.

Näverryggsäck, 1908, Hälsinglands Museum, CC BY
Knapsack, over a hundred years old, from Sweden done in double-layer diagonal plaited weave 

I recently jumped at the chance to take a class in birch bark weaving with “Birch Bark Beth,”Beth Homa Krauss, a Minnesota artisan known not only for her beautiful basket weaving but also for her passion as a teacher. The class offered at the American Swedish Institute was an opportunity to learn the double-layer diagonal plaited weave traditionally used to make durable items like birch bark shoes. In this class, we would be making a field pouch.

The class began with Beth’s stories about harvesting birch bark in northern Minnesota. She harvests only deep in the forest on public lands where she has a permit. The ideal time to harvest is when the sap is running and it is often signaled by flowers blooming and how bad the bugs are. The fresh bark is bendable and ideal for weaving. Stripping a section of bark will cause trauma to the tree but if done correctly will not kill it. Beth noted that she usually harvests over 200 trees in a season. This past summer, she found only 60 trees healthy enough to be harvested. She explained that with climate change the boreal forest of Northern Minnesota is disappearing. This stark observation deepened my appreciation for the materials we would be working with.

Things got real when Beth pulled out large curling sheets of birch bark, brushed away some moss and lichen and briskly tore these into smaller sheets. She then showed us her cutting tool, a clever double rotary cutter clamped onto a table’s edge. She explained that it was created for her by a tool maker in Alaska. We all gave it a try. The device took a rough edged piece of bark and trimmed it into a straight edged weaver, about 3/4 of an inch wide.We would need many, about 14 inches in length, in the course of the next two days.

Birch weavers. To the right is a “fid,” a fiddle stick carved of dogwood. Far right is a dish of the balm we used to grease the weavers as we fiddled them into tightly woven spots

For the next step, we spent time peeling the cut strips into thin layers. Each one represents a season of growth and can vary according to conditions. Beth pointed out details about the bark: the dash-like lenticels, the dark scars from branches that had shed and the damage by bugs. The winter of 2023/24 did not get cold or snowy enough to discourage the bugs from boring holes into the bark. 

It took me some time to peel correctly and to  get a sense for the right leathery stiffness of each strip. Clearly, there was an art to every step of the process. I respect artisans who work intimately over many years with materials so that they have a hand feel for them. Luckily, Beth was there to guide us. 

We began by weaving the inner lining of our bag. We had to think about which side we wanted on the exterior because we would be flipping our weaving over the top edge and the inner side would become the outer side. In our small class of eight participants, a variety of approaches became evident. I chose to feature the golden inner bark for the exterior of my bag. My daughter, who took the class with me, wanted to show the rustic, coppery outer bark side. Some folks mixed the two and made patterns.

We started with 14 weavers that we simply wove into a flat base. 

The diagonal pattern was created when we measured and traced a rectangle from corner to corner. 

A bit of gentle folding (our weavers were pliable but breakable), moved the weaving to a vertical plane. We used clothes pins to help us hold and mark the weaving as we proceeded upwards row by row, splicing in new weavers for added length.

The inside of our woven pouches

The outside of our pouches, now completed. Lucy’s (left) features the tree’s outer bark.  Mine (right) features the golden cambium layer. 

Our field pouches were finished with leather that we cut and stitched ourselves. We also pounded rivets into the leather to attach a buckle for adjustable straps. Beth brought antler tips that were drilled in class to make closures.

Like magicians, we took a handful of material from the forest and created something beautiful and useful. It is a sort of ancient magic rooted in long traditions. Beth talked about “ghost hands,” when a new weaver takes to the task naturally. It’s sometimes said that a weaver’s ancestor is remembered through the hands in this way. I imagine most of us have forebears who knew how to weave everyday essentials. It felt good to reconnect with them.

Join me on November 21, 2024 at the American Swedish Institute to hear about Beth’s Scandinavian Basket Adventures.