Sweat: The Illustrated History and Description of the Finnish Sauna, Russian Bania, Islamic Hammam, Japanese Mushi-Buro, Mexican Temescal, and American Indian & Eskimo Sweatlodge

by Mikkel Aaland

SWEAT BATHING HAS BEEN as common to people as the making of bread and the squeezing of the grape. Numerous cultures through history have discovered that the sweat bath, in one form or another, enlivens both body and spirit. Although sweat bathing has only recently en-tered America's contemporary life, it thrived here long before Col-umbus in the form of sweat lodges and temescals.

Imagine literally sweating yourself around the world, as Mikkel Aaland did-lying on a marble slab in a Turkish hammam enduring a delicious pummeling by a fierce masseur or basking in the profound tranquility of a mushi-buro in Kyoto. Aaland spent three years on his pilgrimage sweating with people in far parts of the world-in the ancient smoke saunas (savusaunas) of rural Finland, boisterous banias in Russia, neighborly temescals in a Mexican village, and a Navajo sweat lodge in the Southwest.

Aaland brought back a rich store of photographs and experience from his world travels. His book is a revelation. "Sweat is beautiful," he declares. They used to say that only horses sweat, that men perspire and women glow, thereby suggesting that sweating is undesirable and should be suppressed by anti-perspirants.

Aaland touches a sensitive nerve in the gentile and those of us who don't sweat for a living. He explains that if we don't sweat regularly, we deprive ourselves of a vital bodily function. The skin is our body's largest and most complex organ and plays an important role in our fitness.

Aaland has a vision of public saunas appearing on street corners throughout America, trail sweats glowing in mountain campsites, sweat baths in schools, skyscrapers and factories-a vision of people everywhere basking in the healthful warmth and camaraderie of a sweat bath.

Sweat bathing, undoubtedly, is more important now in these seden-tary times than ever before, in the same sense that so many of us have turned to jogging, tennis and jumping rope to keep our bodies alive.

This is the eBook edition of the original book published by Capra Press in 1978. This edition includes minor edits and additional color images.

259 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Jennifer Heise · Rating 5 out of 5]

For general purposes, this book is probably only a 4. But for my purposes, for my interest in the history of bathing, hygiene, and especially steam/sweat baths, it's a 5. It's not just a history/background book, but I like it for that (though I feel, since it's from 1978, that one should try to cross-check his material to see if research has uncovered more or different information). On the other hand, for those who are interested in bathing and especially sweat bathing, just reading it and browsing through the pictures is a pleasure.

I've already read a great deal of this book online, since the author put segments online when the book went out of print (unfortunately, the out-of-print price for this title is about $150, or I'd already have bought one):
http://www.cyberbohemia.com/Pages/swe...
The short section in the printed book on "Bathing in Medieval Europe" (from 1978) is not reproduced online; it has several illustrations that I've seen elsewhere but never been able to track down the source... which appears to be, based on Aaland's citations (thank you thank you Mr. Aaland!) to be this book: https://archive.org/details/deutsches...

Aaland spent 3 years visiting and photographing sweat bathing customs, including Islamic (specifically Turkish) hammam, Finnish Sauna, Russian Banya, Japanese sweat baths, and native American sweat lodes. He also includes history on bathing around the Mediterranean (Roman/Greek and the Islamic hammam), small sections on Bathing in medieval Europe, alleged historical Irish hot air bathing, and some reports of hot air/vapour bathing in "Tribal Africa" (as the author mentions on his website, the book was written in 1978; the "Tribal Africa" section was one he wisely did not put online, as it's light on information and unfortunately thick in colonialist word choices.

What I find especially interesting are the sections not just on Russian and Finnish sweat bathing, but on sweat bathing as it was practiced in the pre-conquest Americas. I had no idea there were Maya sweat baths, and I'd always been confused by the similarities between sweat lodge traditions among Native American tribes as reported by rainbow-sparkle types... but Aaland writes clearly about non-Sioux (aka other than Black Elk's books) sweat lodge customs and fits them in with the context of the other customs of sweating he's described.

Unlike many authors writing about the history of bathing, Aaland does give a bibliography, even if he doesn't cite his references directly, and as I noted above, he gives illustration credits for his illustrations, both of which are helpful to someone with an interest in the subject.

Aaland also set out to give instructions for building sweat baths/saunas at home in this book; I admit to not being handy enough to make use of them. The copy I borrowed through ILL has had pages 221-226 torn out (A Tent Sauna, A Trail Sweat, A Private Sweat bathing cubicle), along with p. 233-34. If one is interested in more up-to-date versions of this content, I'd suggest you pursue the ebook that Aaland is selling online of his booklet, How to Build Your Own Sauna and Sweat http://www.cyberbohemia.com/Pages/bui...

[jw468 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironically my copy of Sweat appears to be sweat-stained on the pages describing the physiology of sweating.