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Combating Cold

IN TIMES WHEN sheltering from winter was an annual struggle, knowledge about how to dig in and mount a defense against freezing temperatures was passed down from generation to generation. For thousands of years, protection from the cold was something people had to fight for every year. Nothing could be taken for granted. The icy embrace of long periods of frost presented countless generations with an incredible challenge, and the development of a variety of techniques to survive the cold season was a major achievement in human history.

In those days, everything was dominated by the rhythm of the agricultural year. Flour had to be stored carefully because mill ponds frequently froze, immobilizing the mill. Late fall provided the last opportunity to replenish supplies of firewood or peat. Animals were slaughtered and their meat was salted or smoked—to the Anglo-Saxons November was known as the “blood month.” Pigs were often butchered only after winter arrived, because flies wouldn’t immediately gather and the meat wouldn’t spoil as quickly then. In mild winters, however, livestock could be left to forage outside, sometimes to the end of the year, and be slaughtered later to obtain more palatable, fresh meat.

Once late-season apples had been gathered in wicker baskets, people would sort the bad apples from the good before storing them in the cellar on a thin layer of dried moss. A few hens ensured there were eggs to provide some variety. Pottage was the staple food, cooked in a big metal pot that was hung over the fire. It was enriched with stock from meat, fish, or poultry, and supplemented with lots of salt and, ideally, some parsley. During the Middle Ages common winter fare included pigeons, mutton, and fatty foods in general, along with figs, nuts, red wine, and hot potions to fight phlegm. Overeating and strong indulgence in lovemaking was discouraged. As a Middle English aphorism states, “Winter all eats / That summer begets.”

Wherever people had to deal with winter, they learned to adapt using the resources at hand. Energy-filled foods were key, and taste as we know it today likely played a minor role. Indigenous peoples of the North American plains and later European explorers survived the cold season by making do with pemmican, a dried paste of berries and pulverized meat and bones from bison or moose.

During the winter children could study with fewer distractions; in summer they had no time to spare for their books because they were expected to work in the fields. Women were busy spinning and sewing and repairing garments. It was the time to carve spoons, platters, and bowls. While agrarian activity was limited, winter wheat had to be sown in time, by early November, because soon the ground would become frozen or too muddy. Farmers who could no longer drive their cattle to pasture now had other tasks: dangerous branches were removed from fruit trees close to homes, manure was shoveled from stables, and fields were fertilized. Equipment was repaired. Coppiced hazel or willow was harvested to weave hurdles. Timber was cut into logs. Trees were felled. Trappers were lured out into the cold by the promise of thick winter pelts.

It’s romantic to imagine that people just withdrew into their cozy interiors to wait for the arrival of spring, but even for those who didn’t hunt or trap, there were all manner of activities that made venturing into the cold a necessity: going to school, going to church and stopping in at a local watering hole on the way home, burying the dead, stocking up on supplies, and providing support to neighbors and relatives. The health of animals, which had to survive the winter, had to be watched. As early as January, lambs were born and had to be protected. Helpers were always needed in the communal effort to remove snowdrifts and shovel paths. When people set out across the snow-covered landscape, they took the most direct route as, for the most part, the usual trails were entirely lost. The trials and tribulations of winter helped cement social bonds. Even though life was dictated by the weather and people suffered under the burden of winter, they were happy they could assist each other and they parted with stories to tell for a long time to come. Winter was beautiful even though, or maybe precisely because, it was hard. Could this be the time when people found their true friends? Do summer friends melt away like summer snows, but winter friends last forever, as an old saying goes?

Sleighs drawn by animals, usually horses or oxen, were practical modes of transportation. Dogs were also sometimes pressed into service. In Syrup Pails and Gopher Tails, John C. Charyk tells of six-year-old Walter Viste, who relied on a large German shepherd named Buster to pull him over a mile across the snow so he could get to school in Alberta in the 1930s. During school hours, the dog was tied up in the barn along with the horses, and it received a lard sandwich at noon. Most of the time, the ride only took six minutes, but every day there was a different challenge to be met. “Buster had a weakness for chasing rabbits, coyotes, cars, or any other moving thing that captured his fancy. When these sudden and unexpected forays occurred, Walter experienced more than his share of spills and thrills. If he fell off, Buster paid no attention whatsoever to his master, but continued the pursuit. It wasn’t until the dog had satisfied his chasing urge that he would eventually stop and wait for the boy to catch up.”

There were certainly advantages to sleighs, no matter what animal was pulling them. When the car became a mass commodity in the 1920s, precautions had to be taken to prevent chaos on the roads in snowy and icy conditions. Salt of one kind or another—not necessarily sodium chloride—has the advantage of being able to quickly thaw snow and ice, but it poses a danger to the environment because it enters and pollutes streams and groundwater. That’s why sand and other substances are used where possible to provide friction on smooth surfaces, minimizing the risk of accidents. And in remote places where it’s not practical to clear snow and ice, people now use tracked vehicles, from snowmobiles to snow coaches.

Railways, like cars, came with their own unique challenges. Across the western plains of the United States and Canada, snow fences did little to stop windblown snow from drifting over the tracks. In the mountains, roofs were erected to keep off the snow in avalanche-prone areas. This still left the issue of what to do when large quantities of snow fell. In January 1890, a dozen westward-bound trains in Reno, Nevada, were delayed and hundreds of people had to wait for more than two weeks in a town with only a handful of hotels and restaurants until the tracks over the Sierra Nevada were cleared. Delays such as these remained a problem until the end of the nineteenth century, when a rotating snowplow mounted to the front of a locomotive was introduced to supplement the standard wedge-shaped plow.

And how did winter affect humans out on the sea? During the cold season, maritime traffic often came to a standstill. While searching for the Northwest Passage, numerous ships were trapped in the ice, and crews were forced to spend the long winter months there. But they could be considered the lucky ones, because there were others that got crushed in the ice and did not survive the winter. Finland was excluded from international trade for up to six months out of the year because the Baltic Sea froze. In the nineteenth century, when economic pressure increased to keep open ports and bodies of water for ships to pass through, the first icebreakers were developed.

Transitioning from the cold outdoors to the warmth indoors had to be handled carefully. The pain in one’s ears and hands, which often feels like a burning sensation, could be minimized if one did not enter a warm room directly when coming inside, but rather waited a moment in a less well-heated area. Cold foot baths were a common household remedy for hypothermic limbs. During winter, the parlor provided a cozy refuge, and it was in this room that people often saw to small repairs and sewed. A massive old tiled stove could often be found here, fed with a carefully gauged amount of wood; if heated too intensely, the tiles might shatter.

From their heated living quarters, people peeked out at the bitter cold through windowpanes coated with frost. The room might smell of cinnamon, cloves, candle wax, and Swiss stone pine, mingled with smoke and an assortment of unpleasant odors that could not be driven out because of the restricted ventilation. Window recesses were often stuffed with hay or straw to keep out the cold, the second, protective winter windows having long since been fitted into the frame. If the house was likely to be buried in snow, it would be well insulated, and the roof would be sufficiently sturdy to withstand the weight.

In order to benefit from the warmth, people in farming households brought their animals into their homes, stabling them in a ground-floor area built for this purpose. And whenever possible, people moved upstairs to rooms facing the sun. The rooms above the kitchen were especially popular, because a small flame was often kept burning in the stove overnight.

North American Indigenous peoples had their own ways. The Sioux, for example, adapted their tepees to the season. When it was extremely cold, they built a framework around the tent and hung blankets over it, which provided additional insulation and prevented heat from escaping. Some Indigenous nations of what is now the southwest United States moved with the seasons, while others stayed on or near their traditional lands, yet in special winter homes. Winter Navajo homes were built at lower altitudes, and in farming communities, they were centered around animal wintering and hibernating areas, as opposed to summer homes, which were located near fertile, flat growing areas and water.

In the Pacific Northwest, coastal peoples built huge communal longhouses from split cedar logs. The pitched roofs were low to make the space easy to heat, and the fire at the center was kept burning to warm the sleeping alcoves along the walls. Some of these have survived, and on Vancouver Island new ones are still being built and used for community events. In the central plains, the Hidatsa and Mandan constructed earth lodges partially buried in the ground with conical peaked roofs to shed snow and a central hearth for heat. In the forested lake and hill country farther east, Iroquois longhouses were covered in water-repellent birch-bark siding and their arched sod roofs were strong and resistant to snow and rain. In rocky landscapes where wood was in short supply but sun was plentiful, in the Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, for example, people turned to rugged cliffs for security and warmth. Bandelier National Monument is a good example of a complex of living quarters where stone, both natural and worked, did an excellent job of trapping heat.

In Britain, as in many other countries, a blazing fire offered a warm welcome when members of the family returned home or guests arrived. Architect Herman Muthesius once warned that “to remove the fireplace from the English home would be to remove the soul from the body.” The American essayist Washington Irving was certainly much taken with the comfort of an English hearth and left us with this description of a visit he made to a country home around 1815: “The grate had been removed from the wide overwhelming fireplace, to make way for a fire of wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log glowing and blazing and sending forth a vast volume of light and heat . . . It was really delightful to see the old squire seated in his hereditary elbow chair, by the hospitable fireside of his ancestors, and looking around him like the sun of a system, beaming warmth and gladness to every heart.”

Because most houses long ago were poorly insulated, on very cold days once people left the fire, they had no other choice but to get into bed—either that or withdraw into an alcove or bed recess built into the wall. The curtains on a four-poster bed helped keep warmth inside. Nevertheless, knit caps, jackets, socks, and even on occasion shoes were still required. Poets supposedly wrote in bed by putting their hands through holes in the sheets.

For some time, managing warmth was a task that called for some expertise, and not all methods were equally successful. This description from the London Quarterly Review in 1866 concedes that fires, while a traditional form of heat, are not particularly efficient: “An English fireplace is so cheerful and attractive, even though we may be roasted on one side and frozen on the other . . . It is argued that the open fire causes excellent ventilation, and no doubt it does, but not so effectually as to remove the air which has become most vitiated by animal exhalation, namely, that at the upper part of the room. Our legs may thus be refrigerated, while our heads are immersed in contaminated air above.”

Stoves required specialized knowledge and careful handling. Due to the lower conductivity of clay, tiled stoves retain heat longer than metal ones and radiate it out more slowly and evenly, to the benefit of all present. Marie von Redelien, headmistress of a domestic science school in Riga in the late nineteenth century, recommended: “In order to avoid the iron stove plate popping out, grease it generously with bacon rinds before using the oven.” It was not just how you handled the stove that mattered, however; the selection of good fuel was equally important. Today, this knowledge has been lost, for the most part because the materials we use are different. How do you burn wet wood that has been piled up in the stove? What is the heating value of different kinds of wood? Does dry wood have to be split into small pieces? (As a general rule, the drier the wood, the hotter the heat.) Purchasing fuel was an activity that engaged all the senses. “When you buy wood,” von Redelien instructed, “test the cut end to ensure that it gives a little but is not overly soft or damp. When you knock on it, it should sound light and bright, not heavy or dull.”

The eminent importance of a well-stoked stove on the Canadian prairies in the 1930s was described by John C. Charyk in The Little White Schoolhouse: “In the winter the stove became the hub of the day’s activities. Here the overshoes and outer garments were left to dry or to warm after a session of playing outdoors.” Any items left too near the stove could get toasted and shrivel up into a useless mass. But this was not all. As the cold season of the year was the time for numerous minor sicknesses, the air in the school room “became saturated with the aroma of liniment, camphorated oil, wintergreen, mustard plasters, and goose-grease. On blustery days with the windows closed and a goodly fire roaring in the stove, more than one teacher grew faint from such a malodorous onslaught . . . To top it off there was the lad who had tended his trap line on the way to school and depending on whether he had handled weasel, skunk, or marten, he added one of the several distinctive flavors to the already rich assortment.”

Modern central heating—with hot air, steam, and hot water—was developed as early as the eighteenth century, but people were slow to adopt the new systems, and at first only the privileged social classes benefited. The nineteenth-century shift from fire and candles to gas and electricity altered people’s relationship with dark and cold, and from that point forward, people experienced winter quite differently, but just how thin the veneer of civilization was became especially apparent in times of war, when things suddenly reverted to how they would have been a few centuries previously.

After the First World War, Stefan Zweig chronicled a trip to Austria that “called for preparation(s) similar to those for an Arctic expedition at that time. Warm clothes and woolen underwear were needed because it was known that across the border there was no coal with winter at the door. Shoes had to be soled for there were none but wooden soles over there. Provisions and chocolate in such quantities as Switzerland permitted were taken so that the traveler could keep going until he received bread and fat ration cards.”

Others remember that in the war years, if homes had heat at all, it was most often the living rooms that were heated, while the bedrooms rarely were. “Everyone tried their best to avoid a trip to the outhouse during the freezing nights. On winter mornings, urine was frozen in our chamber pots, and ice flowers covered the windows all the way to the top. I remember that on the coldest days the edge of the blanket near my face had a hoary frost on its surface from my breath,” wrote Bernat Rosner of the conditions in post-war Europe.

Gradually an understanding developed of what appropriate, more optimized heating could look like; different apparatuses promised the best solution. Smaller, freestanding furnaces increased options for heating rooms, but were dogged by the problem that the gases produced by combustion escaped, which in the worst-case scenario could result in casualties. In 1902, for example, novelist Émile Zola died in his sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning.

By the 1930s, the AGA stove, imported from Sweden, became a fixture in many country kitchens in Britain, and they continue to be popular to this day. The heavy cast-iron cooker, originally designed to burn a solid fuel such as coal, combined two large hot plates and two ovens in a single unit that radiated heat throughout the kitchen. In a March 18, 2017, interview, British cookbook author and television personality Mary Berry related that she folded newly washed sweaters over the lids of the AGA in her kitchen so they didn’t need ironing and that her husband swore by the heat to dry the dogs after a wet walk outside. In 2009, there was a competition to find the oldest AGA cooker still in use in Britain: the prize went to an AGA in Sussex that had been installed in 1932, providing an impressive seventy-seven uninterrupted years of heating and cooking.

Where winter tarried and escape was not possible, people designed their interior accommodations to make the season as comfortable as possible. Scandinavians, for example, used to design their homes taking into consideration the lack of light during the winter months. This was helped by a furnishing and interior design style that was brought back from France by Gustave III, who reigned in the latter part of the eighteenth century—thus the term Gustavian style. The Swedish king adapted the French elegance he had admired while visiting King Louis XIV to his home country: chalky-white ceilings and dove-gray paneling echoed the crisp white snow outside, at the same time softening it and setting it off with pale yellows and blues, which brought the wan light of the surrounding countryside indoors where it could warm in a way it never could outside. This muted color scheme also made the most of natural light. Rooms were oriented so that the largest possible amount of that rare commodity could penetrate inside, and crystal chandeliers scattered the little light that entered. Where winter cannot be ignored, one way to live with it is to invite it inside.

Modern interior designers continue to borrow from this style, adding special touches for the festive season: white Christmas trees, strings of white lights, white paper garlands, frosted fir cones and pinecones nestled on cotton wads in large vases, curtains trimmed with larger-than-life “snowflakes,” whitewashed furniture, white-leather couches, white candle settings—there are no limits to the imagination as long as the overall effect is white. Ideally, windows decorated for winter should allow for a view of a snow-covered landscape outside.

A Home in the Wilderness, Currier and Ives, 1870

Georg Favre and Anna Hackman heavily clad in bear and fox fur, Finland, ca. 1910−20