Random Facts About Sauna:

From Prof Korhonen . . .
• Almost every household has a sauna
• A sauna used to be a chimneyless construction for at least the first thousand years of its existence
• Smoke saunas
o They have a club called “ The International Smoke Sauna Club”
o Finns prefer smoke saunas
o Smoke saunas (now) have chimneys (I did not take the picture below; found it on the internet).

• Finnish people in saunas are typically in the nude (even when it is a “mixed” sauna).
o However, they are not morally naked.
o It is not a place to “get it on,” since around 1000 years ago it was a spiritual place
• Sauna etiquette
o Can’t scream or shout (or anything of the sort)
o No alcohol (within the sauna, but after the sauna quite all right)
o In some places, no clothes
• The ideal temperature inside before the water is thrown on the stones is around +80°C (176F).
• Finnish children were born in the sauna (mostly those who lived in the country side; even practiced up until around 1930)
• Corpses were spiritually washed there (don’t think that happens anymore though)
• Sliver birch leaves are often seen in saunas
o They have a good aroma.
o Helps to open pores
o You slap yourself or another person with the gathered birch leaves(but you are not smacking them with the birch leaves or trying to hurt them with the birch leaves, this process is suppose to be comforting)
o A bunch of leafy birch twigs like this is called a vihta or a vasta. Sauna bathers beat their skin gently with it and enjoy its massaging, softening touch.
• Couparri – the gross part –
o Blood sucker
o Use to be an older woman, medicine woman, who would make cuts in your back – in the sauna – and then use a cow’s horn, which is hollow, to suck out the blood.
o Supposedly this procedure was supposed to make you feel better.
o Is still practiced today, very rarely, but one must get permission from the national board of health in Finland.
• Often, people will go to sauna and then go roll around in the fluffy snow . . . still naked.
• The most important random fact is that sauna is not pronounced “saw-nuh” it is pronounced “saw-unah.” (the u in sauna is emphasized, but not as in the letter u. More like if you were pronouncing Uma Therma’s first name).

Sauna in our Building :
This place actually looks quite re-done and thus quite new. We haven't checked this one out yet. I know on Tuesdays women have it sometime in the evening and then you can reserve it for another time (say every Thursday at 6 p.m.) for 6 euros a month.

The brick like objects you see are the things that help warm the sauna up. You throw water on them and . . . ta da a steam sauna begins to appear :)