Happy Finnish

A sweat-bath revelation at the seamens’ mission

A Finnish folk tale equates saunas with the pursuit of godliness. An aged farmer, so the story goes, found fame for enjoying the hottest of sweat baths. His reputation spread until word reached the Devil himself.

Determined to cement his infernal primacy, Old Nick approached the farmer. “If you like heat, escort me and I’ll really show you something”, enjoined the Prince of Darkness. The farmer followed him through the gates of Hell, and settled back to perspire. Satan bade his imps stoke the fires.  “More, more,  more”, called the farmer. Lucifer’s blaze grew and grew until earth’s volcanos erupted and ice caps melted.

Eventually, the Devil relented, red with embarrassment. “Leave at once”, he shouted. “I never want to see you down here again”. So the farmer returned to his soil, happy in the knowledge that once his last furrow was ploughed, he was destined for the ‘up escalator’.*

The story was apparently used to promote clean ways among Finnish children.

I pondered this yarn as I huddled in the undercroft of the London outpost of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church. It is one of several Scandinavian missions in Rotherhithe that once served seamen berthed in the surrounding Surrey docks. Today, as well as ecclesiastical functions, the Church is a centre for Finns in London, and inevitably, has a sauna in its basement.

The building is an attractive early modernist excursion of 1958 by Yorke, Roseburg and Mardall. Unlike the airy upstairs, however, its cramped underground chambers have an air of municipal utility. Simple tiles define the communal changing area. These lead to a common shower room, and beyond that a small, electrically-heated sauna.

There are separate public sessions for men and women and by ethos, if not rule, it is a ‘textile-free’ facility. Booking a slot requires several weeks planning so the bench seating for eight is generally full. The resulting proximity may not be to every taste. 

Confinement and intimacy have their compensations, however, because the heat is extraordinary. It comes from a meter-tall cage of baking rocks, and the frequent application of water. There was a pretence at obtaining consent for each ladle from the bucket, but sauna is one for those who like it hot. Wave after wave of steam hit, searing my skin and loosening my muscles like few other saunas that I have sampled.

I shared the sauna with a group of 30-65-year-old professionals. None were Finns. Most had travelled across London for the pleasure. All were return visitors. Chat was friendly, inclusive, and unchallenging. I was reminded of the exchanges that develop on a delayed train.

I interspersed heat with coldish showers and moments of recovery in the changing area. Sessions last 90 minutes, but an hour was enough for me. I was the first to dress. Feeling eviscerated I sat upstairs for a while recovering my faculties.

I resumed my nocturnal pedal home through the sheeting rain of a bleak February maelstrom. Cold water quickly got the better of my waterproofs and so began my third cold immersion of the evening. But I carried the inner glow of the sauna with me. No matter how miserable the enveloping tempest, I had absorbed sufficient heat to see me home, spirits undimmed.

But did being scorched in agreeable company bring me closer to God, as the folk tale portends?

Traversing Deptford and then Lewisham, my thoughts returned to the old Finnish farmer. His story’s reported message seemed to miss the point. Whatever connection there is between sanctity and sanitary practices, the real moral appear to be that heaven and hell are rather more alike than we imagine. The stark divide comes not from objective conditions, but how we frame our experience. To master that is to take true command your destiny. 

Might I have arrived at this revelation without being cooked half alive in roomful of naked strangers? Perhaps. On balance, though, it was steam well expended.

*As related by Mikkel Aaland, in Sweat (1978) Capra Press.