(soft ethereal music) - [Narrator] On this episode of "Postcards."

(soft music) - It's about doing tough things to live a healthy life and being comfortable with discomfort.

- Yeah, in through your nose.

- Woo, this is cold though.

- What we envisioned was someplace that captured this countryside experience, right?

- You know, the bunad is a costume that we use in the most important ceremonies of life.

(bright rhythmic music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

(bright soft music) The Lake Region Arts Council's arts calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota, on the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 KRAM, online at 967kram.com.

- I'm gonna get ready.

- Are you gonna go in?

(birds chirp) (door rattles open) - Because it's a mobile unit, we don't need electricity.

Everything is self contained here, so we literally can bring it anywhere.

The closer you sit to this, I mean, you'll start to feel a little more intense heat.

So that's why you rotate yourself like a rotisserie, and then you're pretty well set.

(soft lo-fi music) - So what is Rugged Wellness?

- It's a wellness company overall, and we bring that to individuals through cold plunge and a really hot sauna.

(static hisses) (recording beeps) (soft elevator music) - Is it sauna or sow-na?

- We're mostly German, so I don't know if we've got a lot to stand on here.

- Yeah 'cause I think a lot of the Finnish people say that it is sow-na, but for me it doesn't feel authentic, so I say sauna.

- Yes.

- You say sow-na, I say sauna.

- I started with sauna, and I'm trying to assimilate.

I have gotten busted before from a few Finnish folks upon delivery, and they called me out right away, and they knew I was not Finnish.

(static hisses) (wind howls) End of January is my birthday, and I was looking for something a little special, a little unique to do, and I was poking around the web, and I found mobile sauna rentals.

I couldn't find any that were available.

They were all rented out, and I looked at my wife and a business partner and thought, "Something's going on here, like we should maybe do this."

That idea was planted, and it just slowly grew.

- We saw it as an opportunity to bring people together.

It's what life is about, having experiences, and it's super cool to do that with other people, and you just meet really cool people.

It's interesting.

- Don't know when.

Don't know when.

- Not on her head.

- I don't know.

- You want it on your head?

- Oh!

You do?

(water splashes) (everyone laughs) - I don't care where you.

(soft piano music) - We met when we were very young, and we were out on the lake.

I saw some girls floating on a tube, and I thought, "Wow, it would be amazing to meet those gals."

So I was skiing at the time, and I skied over to 'em, dropped the handle, introduced myself, and here we are.

- We like learning new things and going on adventures and just trying something because, frankly, we get a little bit bored.

We're always looking for something new.

So all of the things that we have to do to set up for a sauna, I should be referring to my ops guy.

- So I am the ops guy.

- Once we unload, we put chucks or put stoppers behind the wheels, and then we level it.

So we use scissor leveling jacks, and then that's really it.

You light the fire, and you're good to go.

(lighter clicks) (soft upbeat music) (wood clatters) - So I usually go Lincoln Log style.

I'll let the oxygen just get through the stove and system a bit quicker and start building heat faster.

All right, that's enough.

- Yeah, so for the cold plunge, today, we'll just fill it with a hose and a lot of ice.

In the winter, we utilize our surroundings and scoop snow inside as well or, a lot of times, you don't even need the cold plunge.

You can just stand outside 'cause it's negative (laughs) 20 degrees outside, and it just feels good.

Okay, I put our towels out, and we have our wet ones there.

- My wife does a lot of the booking, website, social media communication, and a bunch more that I'm missing, and she'll probably tell y'all about that.

(Laura laughs) (people chatter indistinctly) - [Client] If there's some room, I'll squeeze.

I might chill in the tub.

- Oh, that's a thing?

(people speak indistinctly) - All right.

- Come on in.

- Party sauna.

- Join us.

- It's 170.

- Oh, nice!

Here, here, here, get that video of that in there, so.

- I do know a bit of history about sauna.

The sauna component is really rooted in Finland, and in Minnesota, there's a few towns that are very Finnish.

They're full of Finns and they're into this stuff.

So Cokato is one of them, huge epicenter in our state.

Sebeka is another area.

This is something that we were really quite unaware of, but there are sauna hats, and these are wool, and we didn't really know why you'd wear a hat in a sauna.

I mean, it's hot, uncomfortable, sweaty.

What is going on?

So I got these from my sister and these beautiful bucket hats, and once you put 'em on, you instantly know why you're wearing 'em.

It reflects the heat off, and so like your ears feel better, and once you're in a sauna, too, if you touch the top of your head and the hair, like your hair is hot.

So this protects your hair follicles and your ears, instantaneously, as soon as you put the thing on.

Yeah, so sauna hats.

(people chatter indistinctly and laugh) - [Client] Oh, Ben, it has your sweat on it.

- There's no sweat on there.

- (laughs) Yes, there is.

- None.

- Yeah, so cold plunge and sauna roasting, they've had some pretty evident effects on us.

- Okay, are you gonna cold dip?

I'm gonna do it, too.

It's hot.

- So Rugged Wellness started after I tripped across the video on Vice TV where there was a character named Wim Hof, (energetic bass-heavy electronic music) and he started sharing his little health secrets.

So I signed up for a 10-week online Wim Hof breath work course, and cold showers was the next stage.

- [Laura] Ooh, it's kind of cold out here.

And so we started getting into the cold water dips, the ice cold dips.

Are you ready?

I see the adrenaline's already going.

- It's about doing tough things to live a healthy life and being comfortable with discomfort.

Sure.

- Okay.

No.

(Laura laughs) (ice clatters) You're losing the ice.

Being able to go in the hot and controlling your body to say, "I can do this, I can relax my body," and then going into the cold is the same thing.

It's a total mental game, mental challenge.

- In that aspect, I think sauna has helped us with maybe mental grit.

(static hisses) (recording beeps) (soft elevator music) Another word that gets thrown around quite a bit is sisu.

- Sisu, oh, yeah, yeah.

- So it's like a way of being.

- Your sisu is your inner strength, your inner toughness, your inner beast, if you will.

(static hisses) (people speak indistinctly) - We can see the ice cubes going up and down when you breathe.

(water splashes) (ice clatters) (Laura chuckles) Okay.

If you go up to your neck, it's harder.

That's three minutes in a frozen lake is probably the max.

Physically, you can feel your blood vessels getting stronger, your heart getting stronger.

Okay.

(inhales deeply) I put it for four minutes.

I'll have to do just a little more than he did.

(exhales sharply) (water splashes) When you go in from the drastic hot to cold, you break through a barrier that now, once you've done that, they will work better.

So your circulation will be improved, and you kind of get high from it a little bit, too.

- [Liz] Coming in!

- Ice chunks are for real, Liz.

(soft pleasant music) Do you wanna?

Yeah, in through your nose.

- Woo, this is cold though.

This is chilly.

- The event that we have tonight is a collaboration between Rugged Wellness Minnesota Shanti Yoga Center in Saint Cloud, and Milk & Honey Cider in Saint Joseph.

We have one of these events each month, just a great way to get together with people that also enjoy doing things that are good for their bodies.

- [Luke] Just remember it's tiny.

(woman grunts) (ice clatters) (woman exhales deeply) - Breathe.

- You gotta breathe, Ben.

- I can't breathe.

- [Client] (laughs) You're definitely not breathing.

- [Luke] It's brought together community.

So people will come in there, and they're not using technology.

You're in close quarters, and it really does bring about awesome conversation with friends, neighbors, relatives.

- Thank you so much.

- That's a cold one.

- Do you feel good?

- I do feel good.

- I could just feel my heart pounding.

- Okay, now I'm to the point where I've stabilized my body.

- Tell me.

- I mean, this definitely is cold.

(people chatter and laugh indistinctly) - It's extreme, Laura.

- I feel like when I was young, people would say like, folks from California, it'd be the land of fruits and nuts, and I always saw that as kind of a compliment, like curious, creative, willing to do odd things like against the grain, and now living in the Avon Hills area, I feel like this is also the land of fruits and nuts.

We've got mushroom farms, folk schools, - Oh yeah, the Avon schools.

- universities, artists, - Music, theater.

- music, breweries, a lot of action.

A lot of fruity and nutty things going on here.

It's all good.

- We're finding in this area that it brings really interesting people.

The people that choose to live here care about the environment.

They care about other people.

I've heard many people say, "I feel like I come here and the trees are hugging me," (laughs) which sounds really funny, but you feel good in this place.

The energy in this place is good.

(static hisses) (recording beeps) (soft elevator music) And then loyly, which is- - Loyly, loyly.

- Loyly, loyly.

- Loyly.

- Loyly is the sound, essentially, when the water hits the rocks.

(water splashes) (steam hisses) When it's really quiet and you're uncomfortable, the loyly is something that your brain just really focuses on, and it like has meditative attributes.

Yeah, there you go.

- Yes.

How do you spell it?

- L-O-Y-O-Y?

Loyly?

I don't know.

Don't quote me on that.

(both laugh) (static hisses) - We came up with the name Milk & Honey from the same, the land of milk and honey, liking this notion of the fat of the land, the richness of the land kind of thing, and just a name that says something good, you know?

(soft pleasant rhythmic music) My name's Adam Theis, and my business partners are Aaron Klocker and Peter Gillitzer, and we all grew up right around here.

What is a cidery?

Well, there's a lot of different, I would say, identities for what cideries' focus is or what they're trying to do with their beverage, but when it comes down, the most simple thing is that a cidery is a place that ferments the juice of apple.

(pleasant instrumental music) - [Announcer] To improve on our supply of apples, orchard men constantly search for a branch that bears perfect fruit.

- There'll be people that use basically the side stream from all the culinary apples that are growing in the United States, but for us, what our focus has been from the beginning is we were very intentional about the varieties of apples we use.

Before we started making cider on a level that was intended for production and sale to the public, we did a season where we gathered as many apple varieties as we could.

(soft bright upbeat music) But there was another class of apples that we wanted to get access to that, at first, we just couldn't find it, and that is bittersweet apples.

Those are the real cider apples.

Like if you go to England or you go to France, that's what they're using for their cider.

Why do people come to Milk & Honey?

Well, I maybe don't know, but what we envisioned was someplace that captured this countryside experience, right?

(bright upbeat folk music) And not only that, just create a space where I think maybe we would imagine wanting to hang out, you know?

And so we're on the edge of the Avon Hills where it starts going into these beautiful rolling forested hills, and when you look out, we're set on a hill.

It's great.

It's like perfectly sloped.

My favorite cider of ours, usually Fauna, but also like our estate cider, and we did a single varietal Kingston black cider that was fermented from our own fruit.

Those have been cider that we were really proud of when we made them.

(soft music) I would say what we hope to do is continue to provide a really great experience for people and contribute something culturally to the area.

Hopefully, you know, we're trying to create something different than just a place to go drink but a place that's a social cultural contribution where we have a lot of events here.

We have music, concerts in the summer.

We have, like later today, there's going to be a sauna and cold plunge event that's generally, we have that coupled with the yoga, and so just anything like that that we can find, interesting things we think people are gonna enjoy.

(slow pleasant upbeat music) (marching band music) (people chatter indistinctly) - [Interviewer] How do Norwegians feel about their royalty?

- Yeah, you know, they say it's very hard to be a Republican in Norway because the royal family is very popular, and they're very good at balancing their kind of noblesse with being really down to earth, and our king has an enormous sense of humor.

(slow electronic music) So I am Nora Taksdal.

Of course, lots of people think it's weird to inherit this role, you know, to be born into it, but actually, the grandfather of the present king, he was a very, very important symbol during the war, Second World War, not only a symbol.

I mean, he was leading military troops from England, and he was actually the one who really said no to capitulate to the Germans whereas lots of politicians wanted to cooperate and kind of obey the Nazis.

So he became a very strong symbol for Norwegian unity.

And usually, I could have gone just down there and uphill, but now they have closed the whole access to that street, and here is the castle again, and now you see the king's guards.

So they're coming up there, and they will have a busy day tomorrow.

(slow electronic music) (door opens) Yeah, so now I changed into the bunad that I got for my confirmation because tomorrow is the 17th of May, which is the big national day of Norway where we celebrate our constitution.

(slow electronic music) So the Seventeenth of May, it's called Syttende Mai.

Yeah, I guess it's maybe like 4th of July.

It's kind of a phenomenon, and we celebrate our constitution that we got in 1814, but at that time, we are in union with the Swedes.

It's a long story, but we actually had a referendum.

When we became independent in 1905, we left the union with Sweden, and they appointed a Danish prince to become the new king of Norway, and he insisted on having a referendum to see if the Norwegians wanted republic or monarchy, and by far, the answer was the monarchy.

- Really?

- So we have a kind of chosen king, you know, even if it's very long ago now.

So I think more and more, people in Norway are kind of principally for republic, but still, I mean, they're the- - It's nice.

- The royal family and the king, they're so popular.

So as long as it works, I don't think that will change it.

If some of the kings or queens start to behave in the wrong way, I think their days will be counted, you know?

(interviewer chuckles) But, of course, in Oslo, we are very proud to have the royal castle and the royal family who will stand on their balcony and greet all the people in the procession.

(marching band music) (people chatter indistinctly) I am the principal viola player in the Norwegian Radio Orchestra.

And I have lots of colleagues, brass players or percussionists who have had their service in the King's Guards Band.

(marching band music) Yeah, I think it's a bit funny because lots of foreigners and lots of immigrants, they say that the Seventeenth of May is actually the least Norwegian day because Norwegians are pretty homeward bound.

We have a cold climate, so we like to be indoors, but on this very day, everyone is out in the streets, and everyone looks happy.

- Hey!

(people chatter indistinctly) Shake what your flag gave ya.

- You know, the bunad is a costume that we use in the most important ceremonies of life.

When we gained our independence in 1905, we had lots of founding fathers and mothers, of course, who wanted to see what was the typical Norwegian heritage, nature, identity, the qualities, the art, literature, and we had an amazing woman called Hulda Garborg.

She's named the Mother of the Bunad.

At that time, it was the Hardanger bunad that was reckoned as the most national token because of Hardanger, the area with the glaciers and fjords and the Norwegian folk music.

So it was kind of the essence of what we like to consider very Norwegian.

(soft pleasant viola music) And I have a picture of my own grandmother, and when she was only 11 years old, she managed to sew her own bunad.

She has sewn every stitch of it.

She chose the Hardanger bunad to celebrate that Norway was one year old in 1906.

Yeah, I will say that bunads have become incredibly popular.

You will see bunads on everyone, from even dogs (laughs) to babies in the (laughs) prams, and today, it's really very popular and very common to see men in bunads.

There are different kinds and categories of bunads, and they will tell you where a person comes from, but this is the bunad that shows that you are from a coastal area because then we have the blue color, and the same bunad here used to belong to my mother and now my daughter.

It's the same bunad with the black color because it shows that it's from an agricultural area.

I got this for my confirmation.

It's a quite simple design.

It does not have embroidery, for instance, which lots of other bunads do have, but these bands, the woven bands are taken from the Viking graves, from the boats, the big Viking ships where they have found these patterns and these style of bands, and we have these funny things here.

Very interesting for cats, (laughs) and actually, the silver that I wear now is the silver that I got from my grandmother, and it's not really the silver which is common to use with this bunad, but, of course, it's a legacy from the family, so it's absolutely allowed to use something that you have a personal relationship to.

And then just to show a little bit of the variety that we have in the bunads, this is actually a bunad that was designed by a famous Norwegian painter, and this certainly has embroidery.

So it's a big job to make.

(drums pound) (people chatter indistinctly) I just think it's important for me because it's interesting.

We were asking the orchestra when we were celebrating the centennial for the constitution, and we were asked to play in bunads, and two of the colleagues were pretty provoked by it, and that was one Swede and one from Serbia.

But I think it's really important to remind ourselves that the ones who actually created Norway were very kind of mundane people who had deep respect for other people.

So I don't think it's kind of the roots of the nationalism that we'll say that Norway's the best, you know, and we should conquer the world.

It's more kind of a humble idea that the ideals that we want to live for should be shared by all people in the world, you know, freedom and the possibility to have education and a good healthcare system, all these things.

So it's a wide recognition of how we want to live in this small country, I think.

Yeah, you want to film this?

The special storage for bunads is, of course, this.

(speaks in foreign language and laughs) Yeah, and actually, bunad actually means something you live in.

It could be a house or a, yeah, so it says something about how important they are.

You know?

Bunad.

And there is even a zipper in the bottom here.

(bag zips) (soft bright rhythmic music) So here it is.

I have three daughters now who are grown up, and they have been so lucky as to inherit bunads from various relatives, grandmothers, and one from one of my sisters.

But maybe one day if I get grandchildren, it would be a classic thing to give it on to that generation.

I still don't know, but I will definitely decide who is going to get this.

Yeah.

(bright rhythmic electronic music) - [Narrator] "Postcards" is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota, on the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a year-round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Council's arts calendar, an arts and cultural heritage funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in West Central Minnesota, on the web at lrac4calendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 KRAM, online at 967kram.com.

(bright soft rhythmic music)