Textiles tell stories--each thread part of a narrative that begins with soil, weather, human touch and imagination. Ultimately, we use woven cloth to make ourselves at home. In the sauna, the place we bathe, textiles are a second skin. They soften and sanitize the bench, they provide for modesty, scrub us, dry us and wrap us warmly in the afterglow of the steam. Textiles are more than decoration, they’re essential to sauna's sensory and cultural richness, bringing together tradition and creativity.
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| A cabinet stacked with linen in the Kurtti family sauna. |
The Bench
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| Suomalainen sänky (The Finnish Bed), by Leena Sammallahti and Marja-Liisa Lehto [source] |
Perhaps textiles became important because of the hard wooden bench. For thousands of years, it has been an essential part of homes in the Nordic countries. In the past, the floor was often cold, packed earth but a bench in the house was a place to sit and eat, work and tell stories by the fire. With the addition of straw, furs and blankets, benches became beds for sleeping. The desire to create comfort and beauty by adding textiles to the home carries over to the sauna. Today it is common to find sauna benches covered with linen mats in a multitude of woven patterns. People may enter the sauna naked but a towel or robe is nearby. Some people wear hats, slippers and even bathing suits. You will find the floor of the sauna changing room criss-crossed with rag rugs and the windows hung with curtains.
Weaving Wealth
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| A Finnish wedding trunk or kapiot. The use of red thread to mark linen comes from the ancient custom of marking one’s possessions in blood. [source] |
These woven comforts did not come cheap. From the Ice Age until the Industrial Revolution, a stunning amount of labor went into woven fabric. It often fell to women farmers to pluck the wool from sheep, plant and harvest the flax, process the fibers--retting, scutching, hackling-- and then spin them into thread, dye and weave the cloth before sewing it into clothing and household items. Lengths of fabric, the width of a loom, became bench runners, bed sheets and blankets. Thick wool tapestries insulated and decorated walls and beds. Cloth was a highly valuable trade good. The wealth of a bride's trousseau, the household materials she brought to the marriage, was measured in linen well into the early 20th Century.
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| Scutching was one step in processing flax: Swedish farmers use scutching knives to scrape the stalk away from the soft inner fibers. (Nordiska Museet, Creative Commons) |
Magic
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Norns, Norse deities, weaving destiny, by Arthur Rackham (1912) Creative Commons
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There was more than monetary value to cloth--there was magic. I grew up with fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty who pricks her finger on a spindle and Rumpelstiltskin who spins straw into gold. Much has been written about the valkyries, norns and seeresses of the old Scandinavian religions who spun and wove the fate of battle on their looms. We know from Icelandic sagas that it is not just myth. Women in ancient times practiced seiðr, which, according to author Zoe Romano, was not Nordic witchcraft but rather "an ancient form of divination with similarities to Sámi shamanism." It is thought that, as women worked at the loom, chanting in unison to the backbeat of the passing shuttle, it induced a trance-like state. Weaving magic was used to see the future and also to influence it.
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| Päivätär and Kuutar, sister weavers from Finnish myth, postage stamps, 2022 [source] |
Sauna Spirit
The magic of the old religion faded gradually and intermixed with Christianity. In Finland, the sauna remained as sacred as a church where women were the priestesses. Cloth maintained its magic and was used with reverence in the sanctuary where they gave birth, cared for the sick, and prepared brides for marriage. Margaret Merisante writes, "Finnic women were shamans in their own right. Further, the combination of the väki [magical power] contained in the fire, birch branches, stones, and water of a sauna (a long-standing Finnic sacred space) coupled with the väki of women would undoubtedly be seen as quite powerful. Finnish women have a long-standing practice of using the sauna for ritual purposes, for menstruation, for aid in childbirth, and for cleansing a deceased person."
A
käspaikot is an example of a ritual cloth. It is usually embroidered on both ends with symbols and figures. Such textiles are now used to honor icons such as the Virgin Mary in Karelian homes in Finland.
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| From my collection of flax linen towels |
Art and Craft
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A sauna towel from Pentik featuring Minna Niskakangas's Saaga print, inspired by ancient rock art.
Courtesy of the Kurtti family sauna. |
The Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries changed things dramatically. Mechanized looms gobbled up farmstead and handcrafted production; old beliefs became new beliefs. Today, weaving carries on thanks to
folk schools and
textile guilds where it's taught as a craft activity that offers community and creative possibilities. Some textile manufacturers like
Lapuan Kankurit in Finland, known for its sauna linens, are taking the lead in sustainable production practices. It's all part of a revival of interest in old traditions and new ways to sustain our planet.
Sustaining the Magic
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| An old Finnish American rug loom at the Iron County Historical Museum in Hurley, Wisconsin |
One of my favorite sauna textiles is the rag rug. Growing up with grandmothers' rag rugs, I am drawn to them for their artistry: a canvas made up of shifting textures and colors. At the same time they are the ultimate expression of unpretentious, practical recycling. They are literally created from rags, the last precious remnants of items used many times. The rug's rustic appearance goes perfectly with the natural elements of sauna's wood and stone.
In our Bad Sauna, we keep rugs both inside and outside the hot room for bare feet. Just pushing my toes into the bumpy ridges of the rug's sturdy weave is a pleasure and brings a wave of awareness that I stand upon the culture of many generations, part of the magic of sauna.
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| Rag rugs and Runi |
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