Home and Living

A sauna is a small chamber heated at a temperature ranging from 80 to 100 degrees Celsius. It is used for bathing to promote mental as well as physical relaxation. A Finnish Sauna has been an integral part of every Finnish home. The ratio of which is one sauna to every three Finnish. For the Finns, sauna is not considered as a luxury. For them, it is a basic necessity. As evidence, there is a sauna to every Finnish home. Not only that, saunas are also available to every public facilities in Finland such as swimming pools, hotels, dormitories and gyms.

The Finnish Sauna has a very long history. It can be traced back to a thousand or more years ago. Before, their saunas were considered the only place for bathing. Their saunas are clean, in sterile places with abundant supply of water. The Finns also used the sauna as a place for giving birth and healing sick people. They were able to preserve their culture of using the sauna and scattered it around the world. Today, sauna to the Finns has evolved quite substantially.

The historic sauna of the Finns is made of wood. It is believed to be in existent in the 5th to the 8th centuries. The chamber is heated by smoke that originates from hot stones that are being splashed with water. There are hot stones in the room and when water is thrown at them, it will form a hot, invisible cloud of steam. These steams will then fill the room, causing much heat.

A person has to remove all his clothing and take a shower without using soap. He will then enter the sauna and set back to relax. The heat in the chamber will open the pores of the skin and penetrate the body to cause much sweating of the skin. After 5 to 20 minutes, the person bathing in the sauna will then get out and cool himself in different ways.

Some of them used the shower to cool down; some take a swim at the available swimming area such as swimming pools, lakes or beaches. Other people roll themselves in the snow in order to cool down their bodies. After cooling down, they will enter the hot chamber again and the process is repeated. Some people use birch twigs during sauna baths. They use leafy, fragrant boughs of silver birch to gently beat themselves. This process, they believe, helps exfoliate the skin to make it more radiant and youthful. They do this process twice or for as long as they want before going to a real bath using water, soap and shampoo.

Up to this date, Finnish Saunas mirror a very long Finnish tradition. Conversations during sauna bath are light and relaxed. Honorific titles are forgotten for a while when Finns are in the sauna. The Finns observe distinctive rules that are hard to define when they are in the sauna. They respect the sauna and treat it as sacred place.