The Wit’s Guide to Saunas

Or, a sensation of invincibility

Remember how Thomas Friedman once claimed that no two countries with McDonald’s franchises could ever go to war? This endlessly interesting map by SpaSeekers suggests that countries with differing sauna etiquette must inevitably clash.

Start at the Finnish: They’ve been onto the sauna craze since before time began. Their national epic, the Kalevala, takes place in saunas, with the gods summoned by water thrown on coals. They were born in saunas, traditionally the cleanest room in the house, and they washed their dead in the same cedar boxes. They have 3.3 million saunas in a country of 5.6 million, and sauna is pretty much the only Finnish word the rest of us know.

“A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.”
— Truman Capote

Still, we don’t get it. When we talk about sweat in the English language, we invariably mean the kind brought on by exertion. Sweat equity is not earned just by sitting there. Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, said Edison. “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get,” said Ray Kroc, the man who stole McDonald’s out from under the McDonalds brothers, if the movie The Founder was accurate. These rise-and-grind Americans surely aren’t talking about the sauna. But sweat is sweat, right?

“Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.”
— George Carlin

Hustle culture doesn’t work in the sauna, as evidenced by the tragic end of the World Sauna Championships in 2011 when a participant burned to death. “At first the competition was fairly playful and relaxed but it has become more serious through the years,” the host town of Heinola concluded. “At the same time the original idea of going to sauna has become more and more distant.” It’s very possible to do sauna wrong, to completely miss “the playful and joyous characteristics of the event.” Surely there’s a larger metaphor for life there. And also this smaller metaphor: The Finns, to their credit, threw cold water on the competition, and not the kind that makes löyly, or steam.

“In the sauna, one must conduct oneself as one would in church.”
— Finnish proverb

My theory, developed in my very own midlife-crisis-averting basement sauna, is that sweating without exertion is its own reward. And if done while socializing, it’s even better. The art critic Peter Schjeldahl went to Finland in 1991, right around the time history ended, and described the sacred tradition:

“Of course I did a proper sauna, leaping parboiled and starkly into a Baltic Sea whose fantastic coldness registered intellectually while regarded with indifference by my body chockful of coziness. A sensation of invincibility is the payoff of the sauna, I decided. This fades rather quickly, so I splashed to shore and hurried to recook. Then in the translucent blue midsummer dusk that deepens toward midnight I wahooed off the pier again.”

That sensation of invincibility sounds like sisu, the closest runner-up to a Finnish word spoken in English, a word that means grit and determination, and the title of a wonderfully gory 2022 film that puts a Tarantinoish spin on their national character.

“A man seldom thinks of taking Turkish baths until it is too late.”
— Robert Benchley

But the kicker of Schjeldahl’s visit, which is included in Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1988-2018, is that the people of the sauna don’t run hot. On his tour, he visits Viipuri, the beautiful Baltic city the Russians filched from the Finns in the Second World War. Schjeldahl is outraged by this history. “You want it back,” he tells a Helsinki art critic.

“Sure, I would like it back,” the Finn replies, “but I do not want to spoil my life with bitterness.” What better way to Finnish?

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“There’s a blast of palpable stupidity that comes from our host, like opening the door of a sauna.”
— Edward St Aubyn

All that said, maybe saunas aren’t for everyone. Some people would rather be elsewhere, so we’ll give them that option next week.

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Speaking of things not everyone likes: Riposte Card No. 25 by Natalia Pàmies Lluìs was universally enjoyed by my paid subscribers. Join them and it can be mailed to you as well!

Get Wit Quick No. 348 neglected to mention the German tradition of aufguss, a sort of performative sauna towel twirling, mainly because the Finns wisely avoid it. Also, it gives me that Helsinki-ng feeling. This newsletter’s mascot is a magpie named Magnus after the magician in Robertson Davies’ Deptford Trilogy. The title font is Vulf Sans, the official typeface of the band Vulfpeck. The book was Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Splash a little water on the coals by tapping the ❤️ below.