Saturday Night Fever

Imagine that big pharma devised a pill with health benefits that included improved heart health, reduced dyslipidemia and hypertension, and improved vascular health. Imagine if modern orthopedics devised simple and pleasant protocols to ease pain and stiffness. Imagine if dermatologists created a magical pathway to more healthy skin. Imagine if mental health care devised a simple process that improved cognitive health, focus, and attention span, helped alleviate stress, depression, and anxiety. Imagine a simple and natural way to detoxify the body. Sound too good to be true?

We need not look to modern medicine or big pharma for such fantastic remedies. These wonderful benefits already exist and are no further away than the good old fashioned Northern Wisconsin back yard, back woods, or lake side sauna! While the sauna and its magical side effects were imported into the Northwoods by homesick Finnish immigrants within the relatively recent last 140 years, it has been an integral component of good health and happiness and identity for Finns for thousands. And Finland is a very healthy and happy place.

“Rakentaa sauna ensiksi” was a proverb amongst the Finnish pioneers entering the Northwoods and that roughly translates to “build the sauna first”. And build the sauna first is exactly what they did. The sauna provided those pioneers with temporary shelter, personal hygiene, and a sterile environment for medical emergencies and childbirth.

When I cleared the little campground that eventually has become my homestead, the sauna was built first. The framing lumber and siding were produced upon my brother’s portable bandsaw mill from trees doomed by insect infestation. Later a violent storm raged across Lake Superior and tore old growth cedar trees from faraway shores, then coughed them up upon the shores of Saxon Harbor. My dad helped in the harvesting of the washed up logs, and with help again from my brother and his sawmill, those ancients yielded beautiful interior paneling. Plate steel for the wood burning sauna stove was bent up by my son based upon a design found online, then was welded together by my dad, and then the door from Grandma T’s old sauna stove was located and installed upon this new stove. Four generations integrated into the making of a sauna stove is a pretty good start.

I had grown up in the sauna culture. And just as Saturday night is sauna night for Finns across the globe, as a child, it was at Grandpa and Grandma T’s farm as well. Grandma Juurakko’s sauna fell into disrepair, so her Saturday night sauna was at a neighbor’s. Afterwards, she would come strolling back to her home, red faced and bundled up and jacketed and scarfed, even on the hottest Saturday evening in August.

A typical Saturday sauna usually includes two 15-minute sessions in the hot room with a cool down in between and then after. Cool down is outside, if appropriate, regardless of the time of year. In the summer that usually means sitting out to break the sweat. In the winter that entails crappie flopping into the snow. If the sauna is close to the lake, there is nothing more refreshing than a post sauna dip. Back in the day when Northwoods lakes commonly iced over in November, sauna on the first Saturday night of deer season at Uncle Ero’s cottage entailed chopping a hole in the ice and then taking the plunge.   

There are countless stories, perhaps some apocryphal, about Americans conducting business in Finland. These stories culminate with the Finnish businesspeople, the prudish American client, secretaries and staff, and perhaps even a random janitor, all nude and of both genders congregating in the corporate sauna in celebration of a day’s work well done. The sauna culture of the Northwoods has been somewhat anglicized and toned down from that of the Finnish purists. Growing up, if we were in the sauna with folks of the same gender, it was not a big deal to wear nothing. If folks in the sauna were of the opposite gender, bathing suits or towels were worn.

The following is strictly for United States readers, those of you from the rest of the world can skip the next paragraphs.

There is a dramatic difference between naked and nude, and that difference is elemental to sauna culture. Naked is being devoid of cover and exposed. Naked is the bare ass opening in the back of a medical gown accompanied by the clanking of stainless steel and the snap of a rubber glove. Naked is the commercialization or trivialization of sex. Naked is cold and distant. Naked has no place in the sauna.

Nude is also the absence of being clothed but is the polar opposite of naked. Nude is egalitarian and honest and wholesome and embracing. In the sauna culture mindset, one can allow themselves to be nude in the sauna but should never feel naked. Once outside of the sauna, nude is an integral element in the communion of flesh and soul amongst a loving couple, but that is another topic. It is time to grow up and see this difference between naked and nude, United States, the rest of the world has already figured this one out a long time ago.

It may weird out most Americans out to be outside and be nude. But depending on the season and time of day, it is good for the soul to step out of the sauna and feel the warmth of sunlight or a cool breeze upon skin that is not normally exposed to such. Far too many Americans muddle through a long life without ever experiencing the lively sensation of stepping out of a hot sauna and feeling the invigorating embrace of a brisk winter breeze upon heated skin and damp pubic hair.

The sauna culture is a wonderful gift passed down from generation to generation. It is the gift of good physical, medical, and mental health and of a wholesome sense of wellbeing. It is the gift of pleasurable personal hygiene. It is the gift of being comfortable within and unashamed of one’s own skin. It is a gift that has been perfected over thousands of years in a faraway land and is hopefully a gift that can be paid forward for another thousand years across the globe.