It's a Sauna Thing

It's been said that people of northern climes have a penchant for being serious, reserved, depressed, or all three. Being a Canadian, I have trouble with these adjectives, but on my first trip to Finland, I felt I learned more about the “why” behind some stereotypes.

Unlike Canada, Finland's geographic location, linguistic separation, and dominance by Russia for 110 years until 1917, had always made it unattractive to foreign settlement. (Before that, Finland was dominated by Sweden for 600 years, and today still has a small but influential Swedish minority. Swedish is the country's second official language, with all street signs written in both Finnish and Swedish.)

Everyone looked awfully squeaky-clean and healthy to me on the streets of Helsinki. And although polite, there was a definite reserve among shopkeepers, food serves, and the like. I was to learn however, that these people are a hardy bunch. They fought the Soviets to a standstill in the winter of 1939-40 when the USSR attacked. They deal with harsh winters that make North America's look like springtime picnics. Their Nokia cell phones are ubiquitous around the world, but their language is, shall we say, complex and not spoken in many other places, except where Finns have emigrated.

I took the subway to the city's last wood-burning public sauna, located in a residential neighborhood. August is "Sauna Month" throughout the country, and I felt that one could not know Finland until one partook in the Finns' most famous cleansing (and for many, a spiritual) experience.

"We're a stubborn people," said the seventy-something gent in the locker room of the sauna, when I asked him what makes Finns different from other Europeans. "We've hung on to our language, so we never had to speak Russian or Swedish. But that's stupid for a country of our size. Now no one in the world knows Finnish except for us."

His admission was slightly surprising, given that most Finns I had met weren't big on volunteering information. I asked him why this sauna was the very last wood-burning one in the nation's capital.

"In the '40s, there were at least 120 public saunas in Helsinki," he said as we entered the wet room where one prepares for the affront of dry heat. "But every apartment and home that's built these days has its own sauna - this one survived because of the size of the wood-burning furnace. But public saunas aren't used too much anymore. It's more social than anything."

It's also a way for the guys to lose their wives and girlfriends for a bit. In this country where the sauna was born, the sexes are separated for the ritual. There are the days reserved for the men, and days reserved for the women. Families sometimes share their own private saunas, but it is not common for opposite-sex friends to get together and have a sauna party. Once again, the Finns' reserve remains strong.

This sauna itself could have held about 50 individuals. There were three men besides my grandfatherly friend and myself, all of us looking like human beets. On cement bleachers were long, wooden seats. Aluminum buckets of water sat next to branches from birch trees. The heat was immediately overbearing, but my breathing quickly adjusted. A vague scent of eucalyptus hung in the air, mingling with the smell of wood burning in the cavernous furnace.

"You know, every farmer used to have a small sauna house next to his main house," the man said, "and that would be for the laundry and the sauna. Even babies were born in the sauna. It's very much a part of our culture."

He grabbed a birch branch, but thankfully, whacked himself and not me on the back. My blood already felt it was boiling and I didn't need any extra circulation stimulus.

Still, I could understand why this ritual had become such an integral part of this northern country. Winters are long and harsh, and the soothing heat of the sauna (while removing oneself of toxins) is invigorating. Social? You bet. The non-sexual communal nudity encourages conversation when all pretense and social class standing are stripped away.

I still wonder, though, if I could ever be as hardy as a Finn to go rolling about in a snowbank after a long sauna. I'm not sure I want to find out!

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Bruce Bishop is a writer and author who lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His first novel, Unconventional Daughters, is partially set in Gothenburg in the early part of the 20th century. For more information, go to getbook.at/unconventional .