I LOVE SAUNAS

The only Finnish used daily in English is “sauna”

In a dimly lit, wooden-panelled room, people sit in silence, sweating. Another, on the steps, takes a ladle of water and carefully pours it over the hot stones on the heater in the corner.

There’s a hissing sound, and in a matter of seconds a wave of humid heat crawls around your ankles and your legs before engulfing your whole body. Your pores open and sweat covers you from head to toe.

This bath ritual has been taking place in Finland for thousands of years, since early settlers dug trenches in the ground and heated up a pile of stones. Water was poured over the hot stones to produce a vapour known in Finnish as löyly (pronounced /low-lou/)

Every sauna is considered to have both its own character and its distinctive löyly. The better the löylyness is, the nicer the sauna will be.

For those working on the fields in harsh conditions, saunas provided much welcomed relief to wash and soothe their sore muscles.

Women gave birth in them because the walls of traditional smoke saunas were coated with naturally occurring, bacteria-resistant soot, which made them the cleanest room in the house.

Saunas were also the places for cleansing rituals before marriage. Moreover, the bodies of the recently deceased were cleaned and prepared for burial on the wooden benches.

For many Finns, saunas were the most sacred rooms and the most closely related to their wellbeing.

‘Finns say sauna is men’s pharmacy’ says Pekka Niemi, a 54-year-old ‘youngster’ from Helsinki that spends 3 hours a day, 6 days a week in the sauna

Nowadays, Finland is a nation of 5.3 million inhabitants and 3.3 million saunas, that are located in houses, offices, factories, sports centres, hotels, ships and even deep under in mines.

Even though Pekka Niemi’s sauna habits might be uncommon, 99% of Finns take at least one a week, a figure that grows when going to their summer cottages. There, day-to-day life revolves around saunas (and nearby lakes used for cooling down purposes).

Saunas are for your mind. They really help calming in this modern society where we are never really calm. “It’s like entering a meditational place”.