– Oh my, salt has been spilled! It’s a sign that a scandal is coming.
– Maybe we can skip it?
– Too late, my dear. I’m already in the mood.
Folklore
Good day, dear Take in Mind readers! The Bible mentions “the everlasting covenant of salt” (Numbers 18:19), which is as strong as if it were sealed by the dearest vows. In ancient Rome, salt was a divine symbol of well-being and health. Many authors have written about the “bread and salt” welcoming ceremony in many Slavic, Baltic, Balkan and other cultures. Such examples of stories, traditions, and legends for various uses of salt, whether conventional or not so ordinary, are enough to write a multivolume manuscript. For our pleasant pastime together, we have collected only a few interesting facts from the past and the present.
Well, let begin.
Salt as an entertaining tool
Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni is one of the largest salt flats in the world. The place attracts many tourists, for whom hotels are almost entirely built with salt blocks cut from the Salar. Moreover, not only walls and roofs but also the furniture is made of salt. To avoid the destruction of such hotels, it is strictly forbidden… to lick the walls. By the way, an additional attraction of the salt marsh is the cemetery of steam trains that served on the three-kilometer route from Uyuni to the mineral mine. Most of these trains were abandoned in the 1950s when mineral production was stopped.
A note about the transport: Once the favorite of Louis XIV (and later his wife), Madame de Maintenon wished to ride a sleigh in the summer. The next morning, a multi-kilometer “snow” track made of salt and sugar along the roads of Versailles was presented to his and her Majesties.
Salt as a means of payment
In many European languages, words for “wage” (for example, English Salary or French Salaire) have a common Latin ancestor, namely the word “Salarium” (salt). This is due to the fact that Roman soldiers were given permission to buy salt and were even paid their salary with salt. By the way, one of the hypotheses assumes that the above has in common with the small silver coin soldo, which was in use in the states on the territory of modern Italy (a more popular version claims that the name derives from the late Roman gold coin solidus). Another folklore suggests that the name of the coin had served as the basis for the word “soldier” to denote a mercenary who was bought for a coin and whose life is valued as negligible.
On other continents, the situation was even more “radical”. In Africa, especially in its central part, salt was one of the main objects of exchange. Salt was a highly valued commodity not only because it was unobtainable in the sub-Saharan region but because it was constantly consumed and supply never quite met the total demand. There was also the problem that such a bulky item cost more to transport in significant quantities, which only added to its high price. Consequently, salt was very often exchanged for gold. In some rural areas, small pieces of salt were used as a currency in trade transactions. The monetary unit in Ethiopia had been the salt bars weighing approximately half a kilogram called amoleh until the 20th century.
The kings of Ghana kept stockpiles of salt alongside the gold nuggets that filled their impressive royal treasury. By the way, even the passage through of salt could be a lucrative source of income for rulers. The Arab traveler Al-Bakri (XI century) described the duties on salt in the Ghana Empire which was, unlike with other goods like copper, taxed twice:
…On every donkey-load of salt the King of Ghana levys one golden dinar when it is brought into his country and two dinars when it is sent out… (Fage, J.D. (ed). The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press, 2001).
In medieval China, salt was also used as currency. Marco Polo visited and described salt areas in the 13th century Yuan dynasty. He also reported that in the mountains the people “… have none of the Great Khan’s paper money, but use salt instead…. They have salt which they boil and set in a mold…” Note that the use of salt for currency continued into at least the 19th century.
Salt in legends
Meat and fish salting as a special cooking art has been known since ancient times. According to Herodotus, special salting factories were very common in ancient Egypt. In addition, Egyptians salted quails, ducks, and other birds. On the territory of the modern Netherlands, salting of herring was the most important part of economic life already in the 8th century. There is a legend that the method of preparing salt herring immediately after its fishing and eliminating its bitter taste (so-called gibbing) was invented by Willem Beukelszoon (a.k.a. Willem Beuckelsz, William Buckels, or William Buckelsson), a 14th-century fisherman from Biervliet, Zealand. The invention of this fish preservation technique turned Beckel into a national hero and the Netherlands into a seafaring monster.
The founding of the mines in Bochnia and Wieliczka is the subject of a very beautiful legend of Saint Kinga, who lived in the 13th century and became the patron of salt miners. Kinga was a historical figure: the daughter of King Bela IV of Hungary, and married to the Polish Duke who ruled Cracow—Bolesław V the Chaste. At the end of the 13th century, there were many salt mining places in Hungary, but Poland was experiencing a huge limitation of this commodity. Kinga convinced her father to give her one of the Hungarian salt mines as a dowry. King Bela agreed. During examining “her own” salt mine, Kinga threw a ring into the mine for good luck. Arriving in Krakow, Kinga founded the Wieliczka Salt Mine. It was a great surprise, when, in the first portion of the mined salt, the ring, once thrown into the Hungarian mine, was discovered!
The Wieliczka Salt Mine has become a real “gold” mine. Since its opening, about 400 miners have constantly worked there, annually mining 110 thousand tons of salt. This brought a huge profit to the Polish kings (in medieval Poland, the right to extract minerals was the exclusive prerogative of kings). It is not surprising that already in the 14th century, Polish kings became one of the richest monarchs in Europe.
Salt as a taboo
In his monumental work The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion, Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) describes the following custom of the hunters from the island of Nias (modern Indonesia):
In the island of Nias the hunters sometimes dig pits, cover them lightly over with twigs, grass, and leaves, and then drive the game into them. While they are engaged in digging the pits, they have to observe a number of taboos. They may not spit, or the game would turn back in disgust from the pits. They may not laugh, or the sides of the pit would fall in. They may eat no salt, prepare no fodder for swine, and in the pit they may not scratch themselves, for if they did, the earth would be loosened and would collapse. And the night after digging the pit they may have no intercourse with a woman, or all their labour would be in vain.
I do not doubt that our readers will offer many more unconventional and original ways to use salt. Moreover, they are likely to back up their ideas with historical examples and personal stories. We will be glad if you share these stories in the comments.
Featured image by Ri Butov from Pixabay
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