Finnish Sauna - A Cultural Cornerstone

Incredibly, well over 1000 people have liked my last article about Finns and their relationship with their summer cottages. That article obviously struck a chord with many, and one of the topics that came up in the comments, and wasn’t covered in the article, was that of the sauna. The Finns’ relationship to the sauna is possibly even more fundamental to Finnish identity than the summer cottage. I will try to unpick that special relationship in this article.

The sauna is not a Finnish phenomenon by any means; many countries have saunas, but the Finns have maintained their sauna culture whereas it was gradually lost throughout many other European countries.

So, what do you think of when you read the word “sauna”. Your reaction is most likely going to be heavily influenced by the culture you grew up in.

Many people from non-sauna cultures, such as the UK where I grew up, focus solely on nakedness. For an English person, nakedness is more or less reserved for the privacy of one’s own bathroom and intimacy between sexual partners. When it isn’t, it is often made into a joke (just think of English humour). In Finland, there is no such reticence about nakedness in the sauna. How could there be when Finnish children grow up being taken to the sauna practically from birth, and continue to go to the sauna usually a couple of times a week for their entire lives.

It is fair to say that virtually every house in Finland has its own sauna. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Even if you live in a block of flats in a city, there will be a shared sauna in the basement and a rota for who gets to go and when.

So, why so many saunas in Finland?

First and foremost sauna is about personal hygiene. In the average Finnish home, the sauna is connected to the shower room. You shower first, then enter the sauna, which will have been preheated to roughly 80 degrees celsius. People have their own preferences of course, but the temperature has to be sufficient that steam is produced instantaneously and the humidity is maintained. This is where Finnish sauna differs from many other sauna cultures: you have to throw water on the heated rocks - that’s the whole point. I have been in English saunas where you are specifically told not to throw water on the rocks. For a Finn, this seems counter-intuitive and, well, just plain weird. After the heat and sweat of the sauna, you shower - that is the basic routine.

But the sauna is not solely about personal hygiene; there is a lot more to it. So what do the Finns do in the sauna except keep themselves clean? Well, they talk.

OK, let’s do some mythbusting. Finns are just as talkative as any other nationality! There is a well-established stereotype that Finns are shy and laconic. It’s not true. What is true is that Finns are generally not going to strike up a conversation with an absolute stranger on a train or a bus, but that’s got nothing to do with shyness or laconicism, it much more about respecting the other’s privacy and personal space (two things Finns value very highly).

In my experience, the one place where they are far more likely to talk to strangers is in a public sauna. In public saunas, such as in swimming halls and next to some public beaches, strangers go to the sauna together. In mixed-gender saunas people often wear a swimsuit, but in single-gender public saunas people are naked. And when you are naked in the sauna, privacy and personal space are stripped away, but they are equally stripped away. We are all equal in the sauna - there is nothing left to hide, so let’s share opinions and experiences freely.

Don’t get me wrong, saunas can also be very silent places where you can reflect on the day’s events or simply let the heat and steam evaporate away the stresses of everyday life. Indeed, there is a saying in Finnish, “saunassa ollaan kuin kirkossa”, which translates as “In the sauna behave as you would in church”. On the whole, Finns are far more comfortable with silence than your average Brit or American who feels compelled to fill the silence with chit chat. This is no doubt where the laconic stereotype comes from - not feeling obliged to fill a lull in conversation with small talk.

The above anecdotes, however, relate to public saunas; there are many more scenarios.

In the Finnish home, the sauna is a gathering place. In other cultures, the gathering place may be the dinner table, or perhaps the fireplace. In my native UK, for example, the gathering place in the home was very often around the television. But in Finland, families go to the sauna together. It is a place to relax and discuss the day’s events, and it is also a place of cultural transmission. Finnish children learn what to do and how to behave in the sauna. Whether it’s about simple safety like moving carefully near the hot stove called a “kiuas”, practical matters like how much water to throw on the hot rocks and how much steam or “löyly” that produces, or more mythical stories like the sauna elf called “saunatonttu” who according to Finnish lore comes to the sauna when everyone else has finished, Finnish children absorb this rich sauna culture from day one.

Friends also go to the sauna together, sometimes according to gender, other times all together. If you visit a friend’s house, particularly if you stay the night, you will most likely be invited to the sauna. It is a perfectly normal part of the visiting culture between friends: dinner, a few drinks, sauna, more drinks, and so on. In my opinion, there are few things in life that can match sitting in a hot sauna with a friend and a cold beer discussing future plans, ideas, and the quality of the “löyly” (yes, there are differences).

At the summer cottage, the sauna is part of the daily routine. Whereas in the home, Finns will go to the sauna two or maybe three times a week, at the summer cottage, sauna is a daily event. A large part of the reason for this is geographical. Finland is often called “The Land of a Thousand Lakes”, which is somewhat of an understatement as there are approximately 187 000 lakes in Finland (many more if you broaden the definition of “lake”). The Finnish relationship with summer cottages and saunas is deeply connected to the presence these bodies of water. Summer cottages are often situated very close to lakes, and the saunas at older summer cottages in Finland are built right on the shoreline. You can quite literally step out of the sauna and into the lake.

Many Finnish children, and indeed adults, spend their entire summers between the lake and the sauna. After a swim or paddle in the lake, you go to the sauna for a while to warm up, then it’s back into the lake. Adults often busy themselves with small repairs to the summer cottage or the sauna itself, gardening, chopping wood, and preparing food, after which a hot relaxing sauna, a cold beer or gin long drink called “lonkero”, and a dip in the lake (naked, of course) is the perfect way to relax. You lose yourself in this daily routine of pottering, sauna and swimming, you forget the stresses and worries of regular daily life; and that’s the point.

Finally, perhaps the real beauty of the Finnish sauna is that it is a device-free space.

In our hyper-connected world where we are all constantly online and reachable, the sauna is one place where you can truly disconnect. Whether it is with family, relatives, friends, or strangers, there are no text messages, emails, Snaps, or Facebook posts in the sauna. You can either talk to your sauna companions or not, either way you share intimate moments with them without the distraction of electronic devices or digital channels.

At a stretch, it could be argued that the sauna fulfills some deeply rooted need in us to gather together with our kin to tells stories and shares moments around a fire. After all, this kind of behaviour was key to the survival of our ancestors millennia ago; the sauna may be an attempt to scratch that incredibly deep-seated itch.

 Perhaps we could all learn something from the Finns and their saunas?

(The original header photo can be found here, and is used under the following license)