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To the Finns and Their Sauna

Both the culture of Sauna bathing and the word ‘sauna’ are being derived from the Finnish culture. The saunas are such a part of the lives of the Finns that throughout the history there are evidences that wherever these people went they initiated saunas over there. This is however how the saunas got so popular all over the world.

Several surveys have revealed that, for five million inhabitants of Finland there are more than two million different types of saunas. Well, that’s an amazing figure- every two people on an average owna home sauna! Obviously with such a ration we can’t signify saunas as their luxury item as it is for the rest of the countries. However, the Finns consider the saunas as an inseparable part of their daily lives and it also holds a rich part in their culture. Even if a Finn doesn’t get time to avail home steam sauna bath daily, they will at least have it once in a week.

The Finns regard sauna bathing as a medium of mental and physical relaxation, a place to ease with the family and friends. It is even said that before maternity health was so much handled with caution, the women in Finland gave birth to their babies in the saunas!

The traditional Finnish outdoor sauna contain a stone-floored-room which is heated up to 80-100 degree centigrade, and then the stone floors are drained with water which creates steam to make the room hotter. People enter the heating room wearing a piece of towel like garment which is called ‘pefletti’. They also eventually beat them gently with fragrant boughs of silver birch. Then, when the sauna heaters becomes unbearable, people jump into cooler swimming pools or lakes. Thus the muscles of the body are immensely relaxed. People usually prefer couples of drinks and snacks after the bath; this is like shedding the signs of fatigue off the body.

There are different types of Finnish sauna; each of them is built bearing the types of people using them. The saunas built for families are quite different from the public saunas as they are different from personal saunas. There are saunas by the shores of lakes, personal apartments, and corporeal headquarters and even in the parliament.

The addiction for saunas might seem like a bit of eccentric to the people abroad, but being a typically cold country which stays under the snow half the year it is very logical for the people of that country to get obsessed by saunas.