Bast shoes areshoes made primarily frombast—fiber taken from thebark of trees, such aslinden. They are a kind of basket, woven and fitted to the shape of a foot. Bast shoes are a traditionalfootwear of the forest areas ofNortheastern Europe, formerly worn by poorer members of theFinnic peoples,Balts,Russians, andBelarusians. They were easy to manufacture, but not durable. Similar shoes have also been made of strips ofbirchbark in more northern areas where bast is not readily available.
Bast shoes have been worn since prehistoric times. Wooden foot-shaped blocks (lasts) for shaping them have been found inNeolithic excavations, e.g. 4900 years old.[1] Bast shoes were still worn in the Russian countryside at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today bast shoes are sold as souvenirs and sometimes worn by ethnographic music or dance troupes as part of their costume.
InRussian, they are calledlapti (лапти, sing.лапоть,lapot); this word is used as a derogatory term for cheap and short-livedfootwear and, in the formlapotnik (лапотник), for an uneducated person, notionally one who is too poor to afford good shoes and wears bast shoes instead.[2] TheMiG-105 "Spiral"spaceplane was nicknamedLapot for the shape of its nose.
Bast shoes played an important role in thefounding myth of thePřemyslid dynasty, which reigned inBohemia andMoravia until 1306 AD.Přemysl the Ploughman, its legendary ancestor, was a peasant of humble origin. His bast shoes and bast-bag were kept as relics atVyšehrad and Czech kings put them on during their coronations. The relics were probably destroyed when Vyšehrad fell to theHussites in 1420.
