Sauna: Finns Seek to Keep Tradition Pure

HELSINKI, Finland —  To the Finns, the sauna is an ancient tradition bordering on a sacred rite, and purists are outraged at its use in sex-for-sale dens in the United States and Western Europe.

They also fume at the widespread practice of unrelated men and women taking a sauna together, even when sex is not directly involved.

And they look down on the new electric saunas that are being sold these days.

“You must always remember that for Finns, always, the sauna has been a holy place,” said Dr. Juhani Perasalo, chairman of the national Sauna Society. “It’s an old proverb that one should behave in the sauna as one behaves in the church.”

The sauna tradition is actually more than 1,000 years older than Christianity in this nation of forests, snow and dark winter days.

Less than 15% of the 4.9 million Finns go to church regularly, but practically everyone goes to the sauna. Finland has 1.4 million saunas--one for every 3.5 Finns.

The late President Urho Kekkonen, Finland’s senior statesman for 26 years, was born in a sauna. So were thousands of other rural Finns, because the sauna was usually the cleanest and quietest place on the farm.

The Finnish Sauna Society, headquartered in a quiet wood on Helsinki’s Lauttasaari Island, is trying to keep the national tradition pure. With 1,800 paying members in Finland, it influences thousands of others in affiliated groups abroad.

The smell of birch smoke and hot, dry air permeate the one-story building by the sea, and the society’s saunas reflect its own standards:

- The room should have wooden walls and ceilings. It should be big enough for several people; the benches, or “sweating platforms,” should be long enough for each bather to stretch out.

- The recommended temperature at the bather’s head is 170 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. The stove, topped with a bed of stones to radiate heat, is traditionally fired with wood, preferably birch, spruce or pine. The sauna should be well vented.

- No one wears clothes in the sauna, and strangers of the opposite sex never bathe together.

The society keeps a hole open in the Baltic Sea ice for members who want to cool off quickly. The plunge is optional--and not recommended for members with heart trouble.

Also optional are birch switches. Finns beat themselves with the whisks, leaves and all, to stimulate sweating.

Massages, rubdowns with rough sponges and cool post-sauna drinks--all light on alcohol--are part of the routine.

“It is a pity that the word sauna hasn’t been registered as a trademark,” said Pirkko Valtakari, the society’s executive secretary, expressing concern over how the term is applied abroad.

She showed a guest news clippings about a portable body-bag “sauna” made by a Los Angeles company. The user can zip the heat bag up to his chin, sweat and watch television at the same time.

“This makes us really angry,” Valtakari said. The society’s board of directors wrote a protest to Finland’s embassy in the United States, hoping to have use of the term sauna barred in connection with the bag.

“The Finns must certainly refuse to accept the sauna label affixed to any other bath or sweating device but their own venerable native institution,” the letter said.

But Perasalo acknowledged that there is little the society could do to enforce its standards abroad, and there is other concern about what’s happening closer to home.

A recent study by the Urho Kekkonen Foundation, which conducts sauna research, found that 85,000 of Finland’s saunas had been installed in urban apartments, meaning a sharp increase in small electric units.

An additional 10,000 “mini-saunas” are being built each year as more Finns move from the countryside to the cities.