LL-L: "Bath culture" (was "Loanwords") LOWLANDS-L, 11.MAY.2000 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 11.MAY.2000 (06) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Loanwords

More on the subject of _bastu_ and related cultural phenomena and whether or
not they once existed in the Lowlands:

I found a fascinating web site: "Sweat"
(http://www.cyberbohemia.com/Pages/sweat.htm) that deals with various sweat
bath traditions.  Included is Mikkel Aaland's page devoted to the history of
the Nordic bath (http://www.cyberbohemia.com/Pages/historyofnordic.htm).

The writer explaines that similar baths used to exist throughout Europe.
Interestingly, he attributes its disappearance in many areas to the Protestant
Reformation, only Finns (and, as we know, also other Finnic speakers) and
Russians as well as some Scandinavians retaining this bathing culture.  (The
spiritual significance of the sauna and similarities with native Siberian and
North American traditions are discussed also -- "Central Asia" here apparently
referring to Northern Asia, primarily to Siberia.)

A decline as a result of post-Reformation morality (i.e., Puritanism, etc.)
would certainly explain the absence of this type of bathing tradition in the
Continental European Lowlands and in the English-dominated British Isles prior
to the recent introduction of foreign bath traditions.

Northern Germany is mentioned briefly but probably erroneously:

"In the 1500s Klaus Magnus wrote: Nowhere on earth is the use of the bath
so necessary, as it is in the Northern lands. There you find both private and
public baths extremely well equipped. Private baths belong to highly placed
persons and are built in the vicinity of fresh running water and beautiful
gardens and herbs. Public baths are built in towns and villages and in such a
large quantity as the number of people living there make necessary. It is not
as Poggio claims in a letter to Leonardo Aretino: that naked people of both
sexes meet with inappropriate notions. He probably means the people in
northern Germany, especially near the Baden area, who are rather loose with
their morals. Among these people there are some who are so loose and
degenerate in the hot baths that they even drink and sleep and allow
themselves all kinds of evil and other foolishness in the baths. If such
immodest creatures were found with their customs in Nordic bathing places,
they would immediately be carried out and thrown into the deep winter snow
drifts with the risk of being smothered. In the summer they would be thrown in
ice cold water and left some time without food."

As most of you know, Baden (i.e., Baden-Baden) is not in Northern Germany but
near the edge of the Black Forest in Southwestern Germany (i.e., in the state
of Baden-Württemberg), one of Europe's most "elegant," having developed from
an old spa with hotsprings and mineral springs.  This should also remind us
that primarily curative bathing traditions never totally disappeared in
Germany and other European countries, including the Lowlands.

Best regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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