Soap and soap bars—who invented them?

Soap and Soft Soap—Who Invented Them?

Soft soap is “a type of soap” believed to have been invented nearly 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. The Romans discovered the same thing sometime during the first century. At that time, animal fat from, for example, sheep and goats was used; saponification was achieved by extracting “lye” from ash, and the resulting product was called sapo. What about Sweden? There is said to be a recipe for soap and soft soap in a text by the Bishop of Västerås, Peder Månsson, from the beginning of the 16th century. Since then, vegetable oils, animal fats, and imported fats have all been saponified in Sweden.

So soft soap is nothing new, and for a very long time it was the only option available. We washed everything that needed washing with soft soap or soap, and it worked well until the Second World War became a reality and there were shortages of raw materials for virtually everything, including soap and soft soap.
The war forced the development of new methods, and people began experimenting with artificial substances. Mineral oils, by-products from the petroleum industry, and surfactants were used. 

So everything manufactured and built before the war was cleaned, washed, and cared for with “natural” soap and soft soap. Many of our finest and oldest buildings—even castles—were built before 1939, and they did perfectly well with cleaning without artificial cleaning products for a long time. 

Away from the Natural

In 1954, more cleaning products containing surfactants than soap-based detergents were manufactured for the first time. In the 1960s, surfactant-based shampoos became popular, and it was not until the 1990s that liquid soap became established on the market. However, these products contain considerable amounts of preservatives and synthetic surfactants, which may negatively affect both health and the environment.

So although hygiene and cleaning were historically not quite what they are today, we can conclude that they were managed with soft soap and soap until fairly recently. Many of us learned at school about Lubbe Nordström and his “Dirty Sweden,” a radio series broadcast in 1938 that got Swedes to clean and wash properly. Before that, it was not unusual to think that scattering a scoop of sand on the floor counted as cleaning, and that one bath at Christmas was all that personal hygiene required. Soft-soap scrubbing became common during the second half of the 19th century, when rag rugs began to be placed in formal rooms.

Surfactants
Chemically, what happens is that the surfactants in soap and soft soap reduce surface tension, allowing dirt particles—often grease—to be washed away. We notice that soap, soft soap, and shampoo lather, and the dirt can be washed off more easily. That is the whole point of soap and soft soap: we need them to wash ourselves and our clothes, and for cleaning and washing dishes, because mechanical cleaning alone is not enough. For example, we would not settle for simply wiping the dishes with a cloth or brushing our clothes clean. Something more is needed—a surfactant! A surfactant is often described as “a tadpole” with a hydrophobic tail and a hydrophilic head. The surfactant’s tail penetrates the greasy dirt while the head remains “on the outside,” and when this happens, you notice that the dirt can be washed away easily.

There are many different surfactants, but the surfactants found in soft soap—soft soap without added artificial surfactants—are the simplest and oldest type: anionic surfactants. The molecules have a water-soluble, fat-repelling part and a fat-soluble, water-repelling part. In the water-soluble part, the surface-active potassium ion is negatively electrically charged. 

The Difference Between Soap and Soft Soap

The generally accepted view is that the difference between soap and soft soap is that soft soap is produced through saponification with potassium hydroxide, while soap is produced through saponification with sodium hydroxide. Soft soap is therefore sometimes called potash soap. 

Swedish is unusual in that we have different words for soft soap and soap. Many other languages have only one word, soap (soap, savon, Seife, saebe, etc.). 

Many people would probably say that if saponification takes place with sodium hydroxide, the result is soap and not soft soap.

Theories Online
“Theories” circulate claiming that tiled bathrooms cannot be cleaned with soft soap. However, with a little background—as described above—it quickly becomes clear that, if this were true, you would not be able to wash yourself in the shower with soap either. Still, it is not at all surprising that such claims circulate online. There are plenty of industries that all want to sell their products, and the old, more natural alternative—soap and soft soap—is rarely the most profitable option, and therefore is not usually the one that generates the most advertising. 

Town and Country

It is said that soft-soap makers went from farm to farm offering their services in the rural society of old Sweden. The soft soap was boiled in the laundry cauldron, sauna, or outdoors in the yard, where the fire was fueled with wood. The lye came from ash—ash from deciduous trees—which was prepared in a lye vat or directly in the cauldron. In southern Sweden, green soft soap could be made when the fatty raw material was hemp oil, which naturally gave the soft soap its green color. Soft soap became yellow when made with light-colored oils and slightly “milky” when made with animal fats. In towns, where people did not slaughter animals and boil their own soft soap, there were soft-soap works. The first Swedish privilege to establish a potash kiln and soft-soap works was granted in 1654 by Queen Christina to Hamiltons Pottaska Compani.

Superstition and Folklore
Soft soap is not entirely easy to make. You have to get the saponification process going, and it will not succeed without the right proportions, temperature, and time. It is easy to imagine how an unsuccessful batch of soft soap could be blamed on witchcraft and supernatural beings instead of a measurement error ;)
So, ideally, the soft-soap boiling had to take place in secret. No evil or unhappy people were allowed nearby, as they could bewitch the batch simply by casting a glance into the cauldron. Other forbidden things included saying the word “soft soap” aloud or failing to stir in the same direction throughout the entire boiling process. There was also talk of magical soft soap made with snakes and bird hearts according to the recipes. All of this is, of course, superstition and folklore, but it is easy to understand how such beliefs arose. There is something a little “magical” about it every time saponification begins in the cauldron and fat slowly transforms into soft soap before our eyes.