The Sauna World Championships ran in Heinola, Finland, every summer from 1999 to 2010. They ended on 7 August 2010, when both men in the final collapsed on the bench about six minutes in. Vladimir Ladyzhensky of Russia died of third-degree burns. Timo Kaukonen, the Finn who had won the title five times, spent weeks…
The most-quoted Finnish sauna saying in English – that in the sauna you should behave as you would in church – is real. The version you have read probably isn’t the version anyone wrote down. Folklore collectors recorded it in dialect, village by village, in spellings that look like typos to a modern Finn. The…
On the evening of 8 June 1957, after dinner at the Soviet embassy on Tehtaankatu in Helsinki, President Urho Kekkonen invited his guests to a sauna. Nikita Khrushchev accepted. Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin and deputy foreign minister Andrei Gromyko did not. Khrushchev sat on the benches in wide satin underpants and the evening ran until…
The cold beer waiting on the changing room bench might be the most Finnish image that isn’t actually about sauna. It’s about what comes after – the exhale, the cool-down, the moment you step out of 80°C heat and your body says yes, now. Finns call this drink saunajuoma (literally “sauna drink”), and while it’s…
Every Finnish sauna has an owner you never see. The saunatonttu (sauna elf or sauna gnome) is a guardian spirit from Finnish folklore – a small, bearded creature who lives under the sauna benches or behind the stove and watches over the building and everyone in it. Treat the sauna well, and the saunatonttu keeps…
Juhannussauna is the sauna Finns wait for all year. On the Friday closest to June 21, the entire country empties out of cities and heads for lakeside cottages where the sauna has been heating since afternoon, fresh birch whisks hang by the door, and the sun barely dips below the horizon. This isn’t a casual…
The oldest form of sauna in Finland has no chimney. No thermostat. No timer. A savusauna (smoke sauna) is a single room with a massive stone stove, a fire that burns for hours, and smoke that blackens every surface before being aired out – leaving behind a heat so soft and an aroma so distinctive…
The internet will tell you that a vihta is a Finnish birch whisk used in the sauna. This is correct. The internet will also tell you that vasta is a Finnish birch whisk used in the sauna. This is also correct. They’re the same object – bundled fresh birch branches used for gentle self-flagellation between…
On December 24th, while most of the Western world is wrapping last-minute gifts or arguing about whether Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie, Finland goes quiet. The streets empty. Shops close early. And across the country – in cities, in villages, in lakeside cabins buried under snow – families file into the sauna together….