Finnish Sauna | Finnish Saunna

Whenever the term sauna or saunna was mentioned, naturally people will think of Finnish sauna. Finnish sauna is a major part of Finnish culture. Almost every household has a Finnish sauna in Finland. To the Finns, they look at sauna not as a luxury. A sauna is a necessity to them. A sauna is a place where they relax with friends and family.

Finnish saunas can be found practically anywhere in Finland. Finnish sauna is in fact an important national identity for Finland. They have even established the routine of taking sauna on Saturday for physical relaxation and on Sunday for spiritual purification.

A sauna is a room that is typically warmed to 60-100 degrees Celsius for some time. There are many varied types of sauna today. In a traditional Finnish sauna, water is thrown on the hot stones topping the kiuas, a special stove to warm the sauna room. When water is thrown on the hot stones, this will create steam which makes the sauna room even hotter.

In a Finnish sauna, sometimes a leafy, fragrant bough of silver birch is used in the sauna room to gently beat oneself. This has a very relaxing effect on tensed muscles and also calms any insect bites effect.

The Finns also like to take an immediate dip in a pool or a lake when the heat in the Finnish sauna began to get uncomfortable. This is done even in winter. In the dressing room or the porch of the Finnish sauna, they began to sit down and enjoy Finnish sausage along with beers and soft drinks.

After cooling down, the Finns may go back into the Finnish sauna room and start all over again. They do this as they find that one cycle of sauna session may not be effective enough. That is why they could repeat the sauna sessions two or three times. A Finnish sauna baths can therefore last up to two hours.

Does men and women use the Finnish sauna together in the same sauna room? The rules are instinctive to the Finns. This depends on the size, composition, relationship and the age of the group. Sometimes, both men and women will use the sauna together. Going to the sauna with non-family members are common for younger generations. Sometimes, younger people who prefer hotter sauna would not want to go to the sauna together with older people. So the general rule is that, everyone who is in the sauna room has to feel comfortable with each other.

There is also another type of Finnish sauna called the smoke sauna. The smoke sauna is without chimney. Smoke is ventilated out instead. When the sauna room is hot enough, the burning wood is allowed to die and the smoke is ventilated out. This type of sauna is in fact more representative of the traditional Finnish sauna. In recent years, smoke sauna seems to have experienced some revival. However, because it takes much more time and effort to heat the sauna, a smoke sauna is unlikely to replace all existing type of sauna.
It is difficult to trace the history and root of the Finnish sauna as it has been around since ages passed. It is possible that Finnish sauna could have evolved from the Europe and Sweden bath houses. In Finland, the Finnish sauna is highly honored because of its many uses. The first thing that the Finns built when they moved into a new house is the sauna. The sauna helped to create a sterile environment. The sauna smoke contained tannic acid and has anti-bacterial polymer.

Another reason why Finnish sauna is popular is because of the availability of wood to be burnt in the sauna stove. Furthermore, Finland has cold climate and the sauna is great place to warm themselves. It is however, popular even in summer too.

How do you use a Finnish sauna? One usually uses the sauna without wearing anything. However, if you feel more comfortable with a bathing suit or a towel, you can do that too.

One usually start a Finnish sauna by taking a shower. This will helps to keep the sauna room clean. Sit on the upper bench. You may want to use a small towel to sit on. For a few minutes, feel the heat permeating you. You can adjust the air moisture of the sauna room by throwing water on the stones of the heater. However, more steam would makes the sauna room feels hotter.

When the atmosphere feels too hot for you, you may step into the changing room. You can even take a shower. You can return to the sauna room after that for few more rounds. It is not unusual to use the Finnish sauna for few times to be effective.

When you are finally done, you should clean yourself with a shower. Dry yourself properly and allow yourself to cool completely before clothing yourself. Drink plenty of water after that.

You should allow ample time, say preferably one hour or more when using the sauna. Prepare a large towel to dry yourself and a smaller towel to sit on. You can use a moisturizing lotion after the sauna but not before.

There is no fixed rule as to how long you should stay in a Finnish sauna. You may want to limit your stay for a shorter time if you are just beginning to use a sauna. If you feel that the temperature is getting too hot, leave the sauna and cool down for a while. After cooling down, you can try the sauna again, perhaps for a longer time this round.

The other most-often asked questions about using the Finnish sauna is how often should one use the sauna. If you are a healthy person with no illness, then you can use the sauna for as often as you need. Again, there is no fixed rules and you should do it to a level that is comfortable for your body.

For those who would like to hear of personal experience about the Finnish sauna, the following articles from Tim Bird, first published in Blue Wings in 1997, may shed some light:

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).

Well, that’s about all we have about the Finnish sauna for this article.