Re: cleanliness

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 17:58:14 -0000

Apparently none of the Finns have been following this thread yet, so having grown up with periodic visits to my Finnish grandfather and his traditional sauna, let me clarify something:

A sauna is *not* a steam bath.

Cheap north american imitation mostly don't get hot enough for maximum effect, so people use a lot of steam to get the same effect, but a proper sauna is not at all steamy. It is also so hot that the uninitiated had best breath carefully, move slowly, and not sit directly on the wood. You might dash a little water on the rocks for a surge of apparent heat, but I seem to recall my grandfather doing so almost never.

You sweat out the dirt, then the only question is how you get rid of the sweat. Water is traditional, but a cultural variation where you scrape yourself down after sweating would seem very appropriate to yelmalio types--fire (in the form of heat) drives out the impurities, and you scrape off the impurities AND water (in the form of sweat), rendering yourself that much more pure.

One additional note for the culturally minded: from what I understand the sauna was also the traditional sick room. Which makes sense from a modern germ theory perspective when you think about how nice and sterile it would probably be, as well as how easy it is to keep the invalid comfortably warm. I would imagine that in sauna using gloranthan cultures the same would apply, with perhaps additional long term blessings/charms reinforcing the health bringing properties of the sauna.

The romans, the turks, and no doubt others used steam baths. Same generaly concept, but very different in feel. Much better for mysterious plotting however, especially if you go to extremes on the steam, so I'd vote for them being used in Dara Happa :)

--Bryan

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