Ethel Alec-Tweedie - Through Finland in Carts

Although every Finlander bathes, as, indeed, they must do during their hot summers, every Finlander does not swim, and it is a remarkable thing that among the women, who go daily – sometimes twice a day – to the swimming bath, most of them will sit on the steps or haul themselves round by means of a rope, and never learn how to keep themselves afloat without artificial help.

Walking through the park at Kuopio one day with the Baroness Michaeloff, my attention was arrested by the extraordinary number of ant hills we passed.

"They are used for baths," she explained.

"For what?" I asked, thinking I could not have heard aright.

"For baths," she repeated; "formerly these muurahais kylpy (ant-heap baths) were quite commonly employed as a cure for rheumatism and many other ailments; but now I fancy it is only the peasants who take them, or very old folk, perhaps."

"Can an ant bath be had here?"

"Certainly. But surely you don't think of taking one?"

"Indeed I do, though. I am trying all the baths of Finland, and an ant-heap bath must not be omitted, if it is possible to have such a thing."

The kindly lady laughed heartily as she said, "Mais, Madame, est-ce que possible que vous vouliez prendre un de ces bains?"

"Certainment, cela me fait plaisir," I replied, and accordingly we then and there marched off to the bath-house to see how my desire might best be accomplished.

The whole matter did not take long to arrange. Next day, at ten o'clock, the muurahais kylpy bath was to be ready, and, in spite of all the chaff round the governor's dinner-table that night about my queer experiment, nothing daunted I presented myself at the appointed hour. The head Fröken , who luckily spoke German, explained that my bath was ready.

Into a dear little room I went, and lo, the hot water in the bath was brown! while, floating on the surface, I saw a small linen sack, shaped like a pillow-case, securely tied at the end. The cushion contained the ant-heap, on which boiling water had been poured, so that the animals were really dead, the colour of the water having come from their bodies, and the room was impregnated with the odour of pines.

Did I shiver at the thought? Well, a little, perhaps; nevertheless, I tumbled into the warm water, and was scrubbed Finnish fashion by the old bath-woman, with her scrubbing brush, her soft soap, her birch branches, and, afterwards, her massage (given under the water), the Fröken sitting all the while on the sofa, chatting affably, and describing how the peasants omitted the sacks and simply threw the ant-heap au naturel into the bath.

The small room had two doors – one opening into the passage, and one into the douche-chamber, which also served for another bathroom. Presently the first of the doors opened, and a girl, without apology, entered and took away a sponge. Did this intrusion make me feel shy? Well, you see, one gets over shyness after being washed like a baby once or twice; but she had hardly disappeared before the other door opened, giving admission to a second woman, who came in and deposited a towel; a moment later some one else appeared, and after a good stare departed; then came a fourth on some pretext or other, and I was beginning to think of the queer stories told of Japan, where the whole paper wall slides back, and the natives enjoy the spectacle of English folk bathing, when yet a fifth came into the room. This was too much, and I asked the Fröken why they had all forgotten so many things.

She laughed merrily.

"I'm afraid it's curiosity to see an English lady having an ant-heap bath, so please don't be angry," and she laughed again.

A spectacle, verily! But who could be angry with such innocent people? I had come to try a strange Finnish bath which interested me – why should they not come to see a queer Englishwoman if it amused them? Flinging shyness to the winds, therefore, I smiled and grinned at the next woman who entered as though I liked being on view and she went away happy.

What was a muurahais kylpy like? Candidly, it resembled any other ordinary warm bath, only the water was very black, and there was a strange aromatic odour about it; but there was nothing horrible in the experience, although I had a good douche – three kinds of good douches in fact – for the sake of peace of mind afterwards.

A douche is delightful, especially on a hot day, and the bath-woman was particularly anxious that I should try the various kinds arranged from the floor, the ceiling, and the walls of the room.

"But," I explained to the lady with a good deal of patting and gesticulation, "hair a yard long cannot be wet every day, even in the summer time, and to have a shower-bath was impossible, as she could not lend a cap."

She looked distressed, but she was not going to be beaten, and beckoning for me to wait, she departed, returning a few minutes afterwards with a small white china basin; this she put on her head upside down, to show me that it would serve the purpose of a cap, and holding the rim with both hands she moved it round and round, in a way which indicated that wherever the water of the shower-bath was falling most was the side to move the basin to.

It was an original idea this shower-bath trick, and it answered very well, but then baths in Finland are an art, and Finland without its bath-houses would not be Finland at all, so I had the shower feeling like a plum pudding inside a basin.

The reason that the muurahais kylpy bath is efficacious for rheumatism and of strengthening property is due to the amount of formic acid the ants contain. Added to which, these industrious little animals live upon the pine needles, and therefore suck all the strength from the most juicy part of the turpentiny pine, and, as we all know, turpentine is much employed in all kinds of embrocation used for rheumatism, lumbago, and sprains. Soon we shall give up these appliances in favour of inoculation maybe.

The next strange bath we experienced was in a waterfall, and was yet more remarkable. Yes, in a real waterfall where a tremendous volume of water dashed down about ten feet. It was at Kajana , a town lying on a stretch of the famous Uleå rapids. The real fall is about forty feet, over which not even the tar-boats – described in a later chapter – dare venture; consequently, two locks, each containing twenty feet of water, have been made for their use. No one could swim, even in the calmer waters above or below the locks, because of the cataracts, so a bath-house has been erected beside the fall, to which the water is brought, by means of a wooden trough, to a sort of small chamber, where it rushes in. That waterfall bath was a most alarming place. It was almost dark as we entered the little chamber through which the water passed.

How shall we describe it? It was a small room about eight or ten feet square, with a wooden floor and walls. The top of the wall facing us did not join the roof by about a foot, so as to enable the water to rush in, and the bottom of the wall behind us did not reach the floor by another foot, so as to allow the water to rush out. Some half-dozen stairs descended from the platform on which we stood to the floor below, but as the only light came in where the falling water was always dripping, the walls were soaking wet, and therefore quite black. It was dull and mystic to say the least of it. Once the full force of the water was turned on by the large wooden arm, it poured in with such tremendous force from about ten feet above, that in a moment the floor below was a bubbling, seething, frothing pool, and as we descended the steps into this bath, now some two or three feet deep, the force of the stream was so great that we had actually to hold on by the rail of the stairs to keep our feet at all on the slippery floor below. It was a lovely sensation. A piece of bacon bubbling about in the fat of the frying-pan must experience something like the same movement as we did, bobbing up and down in this rapidly flowing stream. It almost bumped us over, it lifted us off our feet, and yet, as the water swirled round us, the feeling was delicious, and its very coldness was most enjoyable after the heat outside, and the dust we had travelled through.