Many people feel that a living fire gives a rich experience. We are drawn to the fire, just as we once gathered around the flames in former times. For many there is a qualitative difference in the heat supplied by a radiator and that provided by a woodburning stove. A stove can glow with heat. Your feet won’t get warm when you turn on the inverter, and a radiator has to be on for quite some time before it will drive the chill from a cold house. Electric radiators seldom deliver more than two thousand watts, whereas even a small woodstove is easily able to generate six thousand watts, and many stoves as much as fourteen thousand watts. Scientifically speaking, there is no measurable difference between the heat generated by electricity and that produced by combustion, but the body reacts in a different way to the more intense heat from the stove, not least because modern fireplaces with glass doors radiate heat. An ordinary electric radiator or heat pump warms only the air in the room, but flames and glowing embers release electromagnetic, infrared radiation that has much the same characteristics as sunlight. Warming occurs in the skin and the body as the radiation arrives, with an immediacy and an intensity that bring a feeling of well-being and security. The indoor climate is also slightly changed. The consumption of oxygen encourages a degree of air circulation, and the stove absorbs a quantity of dust. These factors, combined with the smell of wood and a little woodsmoke, and the sight of the ever-changing play of flames, connect us with the primordial magic of the fireplace.
Something else to consider is the way the woodburning stove brings people into a very direct relationship with the weather. You are your own thermostat, you are the connecting link between the subzero temperatures outside and the relative warmth within. When you heat with wood you have to go out to the woodpile, come back in again, and start your fight against the cold. It’s bitter, and it bites, but you can do something about it. In this one small but vital arena you are in touch with the bare necessities of life, and in that moment you know the same deep sense of satisfaction that the cave dweller knew.
It may also be the case that we have become modern enough to look back and appreciate things that the generation before us did not value. Things go around. With the advent of kitchenware made out of hard plastic, the wooden bowls and utensils were consigned to the flames (those that survived are now sold everywhere as “rustic antiques”), and people were happy to see them go up in smoke. At last they were rid of that heavy, crude rubbish that was impossible to clean properly. They probably felt pretty much as we do today when we finally get rid of a sluggish old computer. The generation before ours covered the oak floors with linoleum and hid the intricate beauties of the Swiss chalet-style houses behind sheets of plywood. For us, their time has come again.
Yet heating with wood is not a nostalgic gesture on the part of the Scandinavians. It is both a source of energy and a deeply rooted part of our culture. The way a person cuts and stacks wood can tell you a great deal about him, and the woodpiles you see round about in the countryside are a reminder that wood is the connection between the forest and the home. It’s a modern and practical form of the old Romantic nationalism, as much a part of the soul of our countries as cross-country skiing, mediocre local newspapers, and elk hunting. […]
Henry David Thoreau is frequently quoted on the subject of our relationship to wood. In 1845 Thoreau went to live in the forest because life in modern American society had become too hectic for him (that’s right, in 1845). In Walden he wrote: “It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors.”
Cf. Jeremy Abel on the participatory act lighting, using, and enjoying a fire.
(I see now that I’ve quoted some of this before in a post appropriately titled “woodstove ethics,” and included this later quote from Mytting: “…wood is [not merely] a source of energy; it is … an extremely adaptable form of energy. It can be shared with your neighbor, it doesn’t leak, it doesn’t need cable, a match will light it, it can be stored for year after year, and even inferior-quality wood will still do the job for you. There is peculiar security in the fact that this is energy in solid and tactile form. You can carry it into your house and know that the weight of what you are carrying represents exactly the amount of heat you will be getting.”)