10 Sauna Habits Around the World That Would Horrify a Finn

Finland has 3.3 million saunas for 5.6 million people, the word itself is one of the very few Finnish exports the world adopted without translating, and UNESCO lists Finnish sauna culture as intangible cultural heritage. So Finns can be forgiven for assuming the rest of us understood the assignment.

We did not. Almost everywhere the sauna travelled, it picked up a local habit that would make a Finn put down their ladle and stare. Here are ten of them, collected from the countries that mean extremely well.

1. Germany stages it as a show

The Aufguss is a German invention in which an Aufgussmeister, a trained steam master, drops scented ice balls onto the stones and then works the heat around the room with a towel in choreographed sweeps, frequently to music. It is skilled, it is popular and it has world championships. It is also, to a Finn, the exact opposite of the point. The sauna is the one room where nothing is being performed at you. Adding a soundtrack and a man doing routines with a towel turns the quiet room into a matinee.

2. America bans the water

In most American spas you are asked not to throw water on the rocks at all, partly because the heater is electric and partly because somebody might object. A Finn hearing this needs a moment. Without water on the stones there is no löyly, and without löyly you are not in a sauna. You are sitting in a warm cupboard, waiting.

3. America also insists on swimwear

Nudity is standard in a Finnish home sauna and the swimsuit is the faintly suspicious choice. In America the rule inverts completely and a covering is generally required. The result, from a Finnish point of view, is a room full of people slowly steaming their own polyester.

4. The Dutch make it silent and mixed and dry

Anna wrote the definitive account of this for Ink Tank after five years in Amsterdam, and her verdict was that no Finn will ever enjoy a Dutch sauna. Mixed, naked, strictly hushed and frequently without a bucket and ladle anywhere in sight. Finns are entirely relaxed about the naked part. It is the missing ladle that constitutes the crime.

5. Japan makes you wash first, thoroughly

Before entering an onsen you scrub yourself completely clean at a low stool, because the water is for soaking rather than washing. Finns will nod along to this, since the logic is sound and the rules are firm. What stops them is that a Japanese bath is almost never mixed, and tattoos can bar you from the building entirely. In Finland the sauna is where the body stops being a topic.

6. Britain calls a warm cupboard a sauna

I say this as an Englishman. The British leisure centre sauna is a pine box at the end of the pool, roughly sixty degrees, occupied by two men discussing parking and a laminated sign about the maximum recommended duration. There is no ladle, there is no bucket and there is often a window onto the pool so nobody is unsupervised. It is not a sauna. It is a cupboard with ambitions.

7. Russia hits harder and expects you to keep up

The banya runs hot, wet and social, and the venik, a bundle of birch or oak, is used on you with considerably more enthusiasm than a Finnish vihta. Finns respect the banya. It is the closest thing to a peer. But there is a competitive edge to the whole business, a sense of endurance being measured, and a Finn does not want the sauna to become a contest. The sauna is where the contest stops.

8. Turkey hands you to a stranger

The hammam is wet, marble, steam rather than dry heat, and at some point a professional will scrub you with a mitt and remove a layer of you that you did not know was available. It is magnificent. It is also being done to you, by someone else, on a schedule, which is three ideas a Finn does not associate with getting clean.

9. Korea turns it into a night out

The jjimjilbang is a bathhouse complex where families arrive together, move between rooms at different temperatures, eat and in many places sleep over in shared communal halls. Every part of that is sociable. The Finnish sauna is sociable too, but in a much smaller unit and with far more silence, and the idea of bringing the whole family for the night and staying until breakfast rearranges the concept entirely.

10. Everywhere puts a television in it

Gym saunas, hotel saunas, spa saunas, all quietly acquiring a screen. This is the one that gets the strongest reaction, because it breaks the rule underneath every other rule. The Finnish sauna is the last room that nothing can follow you into. Put a screen in it and you have not upgraded the sauna. You have closed it.

Put a screen in it and you have not upgraded the sauna. You have closed it.

None of this is a complaint about anyone else. Every country on that list has built something good out of hot air and water, and several of them are doing things Finland has never bothered to try. But the Finnish version is the one with the ladle, the silence and the door that nothing follows you through, and once you have sat in that, the pine cupboard at the leisure centre is very hard to take seriously. I have been trying for twenty years.