Finns want to sweat their troubles away

Finns love sauna, and build saunas everywhere they go. Still, finding a perfect Finnish sauna experience abroad is tough. It can be equally challenging to get foreign friends to fully grasp the importance of sauna culture in Finns' lives.

ByLaura Kukkonen

My childhood summers were spent on the countryside of Eastern Finland, at my grandparents' old house turned into a summer cottage. Mostly I remember the summers as sunny and bright, but the best part was going to sauna on a rainy day. My sisters and I would sit with our aunt in the dimly lit, humid, wood paneled room that Finns call "löyly", usually in about 80 degrees Celcius. We threw water on the steaming hot rocks above the wood burning stove called "kiuas" and enjoyed the scents of the bath whisk made by our grandmother out of fresh birch branches. After many rounds of löyly and going outside to cool off, we got to wash our hair outside in the rain.

I will never feel as refreshed as I did during those nights after sauna, drinking redcurrant juice at the cottage with my family.

Millions of Finns have similar fond memories of sauna, where you spend time naked with strangers, family, friends, and the occasional business acquaintance. In fact, there are millions of saunas in Finland, more than town houses and dogs combined.

Just one family's life holds numerous stories about the Finnish sauna. Like how my fiance's father was born in one, which was the common custom with previous generations. My great grandmother gave birth in a sauna eight times. In the olden days Finns also kept their deceased relatives in a sauna before burials, because it was the easiest place to clean and suitable to wash the bodies.

There was an instance when one Finnish father had just gotten home from the hospital after a life-threatening condition and went right to löyly - let me remind you it's usually at least 80 degrees Celcius - and almost died. Usually the sauna is considered healthy, but there are limits. There are a lot of similar cautionary tales. For example all the times when someone has cooled off rolling in the snow without checking the surroundings. When the snow is old and frozen it can lead to serious scratches in the limbs.

In addition to everyday life, sauna is a very integral part of Finnish social life, like nights with friends and definitely bachelorette parties. Not to mention all of the holidays, like Christmas and midsummer, which are nothing in Finland if there isn't a possibility to go to sauna.

Sauna is for all ages in Finland. On average Finns spend about over an hour taking a sauna every week. Some don't go at all, while others go to sauna many times per week.

One regular Finnish family answered to a survey about their sauna customs. They do not represent all of Finland in any way, and this is just an example of one sauna-going group of people. The youngest sauna-goer in this family is two years old and the oldest is 75. All of them go to sauna at least once a week, most of them more often. Usually it is a social event, where there is more than one person in löyly.

In this family, one löyly session usually lasts around half an hour. Half the respondents have a sauna at their own house, four of them have a wood-burning kiuas, one goes to löyly in their own apartment and five people have a sauna in their apartment building. All of them are in löyly naked and throw water on the kiuas while discussing current life events with others. This is how you take a sauna in Finland.

Details about this project can be found atGithub.