This is to welcome everybody to our brand new blog "Electric Vihta". For those of you who do not know what a 'vihta' is, let's give you a brief but intimate introduction. 'Vihta', or 'vasta', is related to the great sauna culture of Finland and is literally a bunch of birch branches tied together with another twig of birch. It requires personal skills and a specific time of the year to put together the perfect vihta.
Well, what do you do with it then, I hear you ask. As mentioned, vihta is used in the sauna once bathing there. In a nicely heated sauna, the vihta is first soaked in hot water to make it soft. Then, as the water is thrown on the stove and the steam lands on your shoulders, you whip yourseldf gently with the 'vihta'. This greatly stimulates your circulation and clarifies the pores of your skin leaving it refreshed and relaxed.
There, that's 'vihta' in short. This blog, nevertheless, is not only about 'electric' vihta (which I'm sure you realized doesn't exist in reality). This sauna with an 'electric vihta', as we'd like to perceive it, is a forum to whip the existing reality that we all roam within. There will be more than one narrator and to make things a little more interesting, our narrators are not all from one locus nor from one nationality. Posts will be comparative by nature, usually on the axis Finland-United Kingdom, but other viewpoints may occur.
Electric vihta will take on any topic and place it under scrutiny. In the course of this blog, we hope that you'll enjoy reading our little excursions into the world as we see it. Hopefully you'll feel as relaxed and refreshed as using a real vihta.
The format will hopefully follow the next guidelines (not strictly):
-first post of the week decides the topic (anything from media, work, culture, reality (hehey), etc.). Whoever is first gets to choose...
-following posts will provide different points of view with a comparative perspective.
Vihtomisiin (Finnish for 'until the next vihta time')!
Nygard
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