nothing like jumping into a lake after , a hot sauna.
Letting off Steam, the Finnish Way
Article in Blue Wings in 1997, by Tim Bird
Some like it hot, not least the Finns. If you haven't already tried sauna bathing in Finland, it will only be a matter of time before someone introduces you to it. Watch out: perspiration can be habit-forming!
Imagine the scene: you take your clothes off and stem into a murky room. There are other naked men sitting next to you on wooden benches. Someone throws some water on a stove and the warmth in this little wood-lined chamber becomes an inferno. The sweat is running down your arms, your flesh is glistening. Your hear gasps and exclamations from along the wooden bench. You drop your head to avoid the initial scalding of the steam.
Someone takes a bunch of birch twigs from a tub of water and starts beating you on the back and neck. Your skin stings, there's a sweet smell of wet leaves, some of them pasted to your legs. You get up and follow the other men out of the door and your bare feet sink into several inches of snow. The steam coils around you as you trot through the frost to the lake side. You jump into a hole in the ice and splash around for a few seconds. Your skin has turned red as you pick your way through the snow and back to the little chamber. You pass a steaming body sprawled in the snow, rubbing a pink thigh with a handful of white crystals. You go back into the chamber. The door closes, someone throws water on the stove, the cycle is repeated.
Nobody is holding a gun to your head. It isn't an inflicted punishment or torture. You are doing this because you want to. What's more, you're not some sort of pervert or masochist.
The sweeness of sweat
The ritual of the sauna is the ultimate Finnish experience, and it's the only Finnish word to have entered the world vocabulary. See them grin when you mispronounce it - it's sow-na, as in cow, not sor-na, as in door - and hear them chuckle as you brace yourself when they toss more water onto the stove. They're the sauna experts, the connoisseurs of perspiratory entertainment. How else can a country like Finland, with a small population and a funny language, hope to colonize world culture? They're good at mobile telephones and luxury cruise ships, but these lucrative exports were not invented by the Finns. The sauna was.
At least, that's what everybody tells you. In fact the concept of sweating for health, cleanliness and pleasure is by no means historically confined to Finlands borders. The Turkish bath or hamman is a not-too-distant cousin. So are the Russian bania, the sweat lodge of the Eskimos and American Indians, the Japanese mushiboro and the temescal of Mexico.
Precise origins of these various forms of steam bath, though, are sufficiently obscured by the mists of time for the Finns to claim this method of bathing as their own. Certainly, the sauna, Finnish style, is the most common modern steam bath. It's also the most versatile: saunas come in all shapes and sizes, from communal caverns to tiny cupboards. The first Finnish saunas built overseas were erected in the Delaware River valley in America by settlers in 1638. Now Finnish saunas are at the centre of a major worldwide export trade.
The original Finnish sauna was little more than a crudely covered pit, and one of the first known mentions of the facility appears in the writing of Nestori, a Russian historian, in 1113. Archaeological evidence, however, suggests that the steam bath had already been invented during the stone age. The Finns' association with the habit is reflected throughout Finnish literature: 15 of the 50 poems that make up the national epic, the Kalevala, make mention of the sauna, and it's a crucial location for scenes from Aleksis Kivi's Seven Brothers.
The details of sauna lore and attitudes towards it may have changed, but the popularity of the practice remains undiminished. The Christmas sauna, for instance, is in many families an essential event, while a survey in the 1970s showed that over 90 per cent in every age group of the population in the Finnish town of Vammala used the sauna regularly.
There's also evidence that the sauna has long been regarded as the prime Finnish eccentricity. The journals of the Italian Giuseppe Acerbi, for instance, on his travels through Finland to the North Cape in 1789-99, include an illustration of a family gathered, garment-free, in a large steamy cell, while the fully clothed Mediterranean hesitates bewildered at the door.
The modern sauna has retained a strong element of ritual, but little of the mystic reverence once conferred on it remains. Until the 19th century the sauna was still a hospital and a maternity ward as well as a bathing room. Etiquette required social restraint, if not complete silence while bathing. Connected with birth and health and life-affirming water, the sauna was as sacred as a church. The faith in the healing powers of perspiration was absolute: if the sauna cannot cure you, went the adage, nothing can. Even today, the notion persists that the sauna can in some way purge the blood.
Opinions vary on the tangible medical benefits. But all agree that sweating is a desirable inbuilt mechanism for keeping the body temperature as close as possible to 37 degrees Centigrade and that it helps to expel wastes. There' s a consensus, too, that the feeling of relaxation that is the intended outcome is of spiritual, and therefore medical, advantage. The placebo effect of the sauna is powerful and only the faintest of heart, in either physical or mental sense, need approach with caution.
So what are the ingredients of the perfect sauna visit? Ideally, the sauna should be as close to the water as possible - sea, lake or river, it doesn't matter which. The sauna should be heated with a wood fire. Purists will shake their heads sagely and tell you that the only real sauna is the smoke sauna, or savusauna. This is the most traditional - and of these days rarest - type of which all others are supposed to be hybrids, and which involves keeping the smoke from the stove in the room until the very last moment before bathing. In any case, electric saunas are strictly for city apartment blocks, fitness centres and municipal swimming pools: you may think that sweat is sweat, no matter the cause, but any Finn will advise you that the heat from an electric stove is dry and characterless compared with the steam that issues from a wood-fired stove.
Besides, the preparation and pungency of the wood fire are vital aspects of the ritual. Enjoyment is enhanced by anticipation and the knowledge that this pleasure is worth waiting for. Take your time, don't rush.
Moment of naked truth
So the time comes, it's your turn and - well there's this delicate matter of taking your clothes off. Let's face it, modesty is a universal trait - or is it vanity, and the suspicion that we look rather better clothed than we do derobed? The first-time sauna bather from abroad often finds this casual intimacy in the company of new acquaintances, if not total strangers, a little daunting. The only way to deal with this is to simply take the plunge. The chances are you'll discover your beer gut or your birth mark are in good company, and any self-consciousness is soon dispelled by the camaraderie of the visit.
As for sex and sauna - well what you do in private is your own business, but in Finland the two do not go hand in hand, as it were. It's either too cramped or too hot. Moreover public mixed saunas require that you wear a swimming costume. And flagellation? Those birch switches, known in the eastern dialects as vasta and in the west as vihta, are designed to encourage perspiration and are said to enhance the circulation. Like many of the mysteries of the sauna, it seems perverse - until you try it.
The best circumstances are a warm summer's day and a place to bathe. That winter roll in the snow or dip in the hole in the ice, or avanto, nor always practical, but a cooling swim between sweating sessions is luxuriously refreshing. The avanto, too, requires less courage than is generally supposed: after all, the water under the ice is warmer than the air above it.
Beer is a 20th century addition to the ceremony, and bottles are typically cooling in the lake, ready for that sauna porch chat. A couple of beers won't hurt, but beware of the demon dehydration. In any case, this is one place where alcohol is not required to break the ice. You won't find many managing directors bathing with their lower-ranking employees, but still the sauna is a great leveller. You look as ridiculous as the next man (or woman) when you're running naked down that jetty in a cloud of steam. The sauna has its comic side, and Finns can be a little over-earnest about their national pass-time. Some may frown as they assess the quality of the löyly, the steam that's given off by the stove or kiuas. They'll quote some impressive statistics to support the quintessential Finnishness of this pursuit; did you know, for example, that Finland is the only country in the world with more saunas than cars? Did you know that the late President Kekkonen perfected his renowned diplomacy by negotiations in the sauna, and that similar conferences involving Finnish businessmen are a traditional aspect of Finnish commercial life.
Above all, they'll do their best to make sure you share the experience. You might as well give in. It's a simple, uncomplicated pleasure, to which nobody is exempt from access. So never mind the mysticism: just remember you've only one duty in the sauna and that's to enjoy it.
In Helsinki you can try the sauna at just about any hotel, fitness centre or swimming pool, although these are sure to be the electric variety. The public sauna par excellence is at Yrjönkatu, opposite the Torni hotel, complete with masseur and magnificent tiled swimming pool. The "real thing", including two smoke saunas and avanto in winter, is provided by the Saunaseura (sauna society) on the island of Lauttasaari in the west of the city: call (90) 678 677 for opening times. There are reconstructions of old saunas at the outdoor museum at seurasaari (bus 24 from city centre).
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The Finnish Sauna
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