The Nordic Spring season.
One of the sure signs of the new spring season is the green leaves on the birch trees. Birch trees get covered up in green leaves early in the spring season, in just two weeks.
An essential part of the Finnish sauna tradition during the spring season is the birch tree branch Vihta/Vasta.
It is made up of the new fresh birch branches as they appear in the spring season. The branches about the length of an arm that are bundled together, tied with a new branch shoot that forms a tight collar. A single Vihta has about 10 -20 birch branches in a bundle.
The use of the spring season vihta is to whack the back of a person in the hot steaming sauna. The whacking motion fan’s hot air, therefore, concentrated heat is applied to the back of the person. The whacking motion also works like a light scrub or a massage. The green leaves of the branches slapping the back of the person.
The sauna house gained popularity because of the need to warm up after working and toiling outside during the freezing winters of the Nordic season in Finland. Forestry timber work was backbreaking labor, and it created sweating workers which eventually (when the action stopped) turned into ice and sore muscles. After a days toil, the Lumberjacks needed to wash up warm up and refresh for the next day toil. The sauna was the ideal remedy for those people of the land in the early years of the 18 century. The sauna was often the first building built when moving into a new area of land for farming or forestry workers campsite.
Pictures of the spring season birch tree Vihta.
There have been many types of sauna’s, and various heating methods, fireplaces and the heated rocks that create the steam inside the room. Most of the early ones were heated with the smoke staying inside the sauna room, there was no chimney. After the rocks were hot and ready, a window would be opened to let most of the smoke out, then the bathers could go in, throw water on the rocks and enjoy the hot steam in the heated sauna. The walls of those smoke saunas are always black from smoke, there would still be a visible tell sign if someone had leaned on the wall of a smoke sauna. I’m not sure where/what they sat on, without getting the black soot on their butt.