How can you harvest salt naturally?

Question

Not including from the Sea.

1000 years ago, when people lived simply and in the forest, how did they get salt? Without large scale mining, access to the sea or trade? Are there any plants that naturally contain salt? Is there a way to harvest it from the soil? Is there any way to find anything in the woods that has a naturally salty taste?

Answer 1

There are salt deposits in the earth that people do mine.  But if you don't have access to that, you might be in for some trouble.  Soil might have the chemical components you need to make salt (Na and Cl) but getting them out of the soil and into salt would be a nice little chemistry challenge I would think.

Answer 2

People who lived far from both the sea and natural salt mines had to import salt from great distances at considerable cost. My mother, who as a girl lived through the Russian Revolution, told me that there was a period of about 6 months when they simply couldn't get salt, and it was awful to live without it.