Smoke Sauna Sausage—The Finnish Way

• by Miranda Gavin
• in artist residency Finland sauna
• posted May 19, 2019

Who would have thought that three S words could come together in such a remarkable way?

The Finns take the sauna experience seriously and I now understand why. I’ve experienced a variety of saunas in various cities and countries, but none of them compare to my first Finnish sauna. I reconnected with parts of my body that I had forgotten existed to the extent that I tingled and smiled at the same time. The immersive sensation was a revelation, not least because of sitting in the moist heat and steam followed by a refreshing plunge into a 5-degree Celsius lake surrounded by birch trees, impossible skies and felt-capped Finns, men and women, young and old, nonchalantly dipping in and out of the sauna and the water.

The rapid and marked change from hot to cold is at the heart of a cultural practice that appears to be symbolic of the Finnish way of life. For those who love facts, it is estimated that there are between two to three million saunas in a population of around seven million, that’s around one for every household. Sitting on tiered benches in a wooden A-frame timber room and dripping from a combination of perspiration and condensation while listening to locals chit-chat in a delightful, songlike language that is melodious and easy on the ear transports to me to another dimension and is unlike anything I have experienced so far.

In the mid-1990s, while living and teaching in Prague, I had regularly visited a city sauna but this public sauna with its outdoor setting is incomparable. It is open once a week on a Wednesday from 5pm-11pm in the summer (more often in the winter), costs 5 Euros, and comprises of two saunas—a regular sauna and a smoke sauna: both saunas are heated by a fire stoked from outside the sauna room, the difference being that in the smoke sauna there are no flames beneath the coals and there is no chimney—the smoke escapes through a vent in the ceiling or via the door when people enter and exit the room.

The steam is fed almost entirely by local men who take it in turns to ladle water onto the coals using a long wooden pole capped by a U-shaped piece of metal sealed at one end. It is said that each sauna has its unique characteristics and steam, known as löyly in Finnish. The felt hats are both practical and stylish, keeping people’s heads cool in the sauna and warm in the water, and I spent some time appreciating the different designs and colours—one man, who I have seen twice in the smoke sauna, wears a rather fetching stripy hat with pendulous ears and a matching cover for the board he sits on in the sauna.

The smoke sauna, or savusauna, is centuries old and has remained largely unchanged. The evening sunlight, diffused by dust, filtered through the smoke sauna outlining the faces, arms, and torsos of the men and women sitting on paint palette-like boards to create a chiaroscuro effect (contrasts of light and dark) reminiscent of 16th-century European paintings. I felt as though I had been transported back in time.

The smoke from the burning wood is trapped inside and circulates in the room. It’s worth noting that this is a form of charcoal, not dirt, and it is also anti-bacterial. This is a tad too much for some people, especially on inhalation, but I enjoyed it and emerged from my first smoke sauna with smudges of soot on my back and my face. I had anticipated stepping out into the daylight (we have 19 hours of light a day) looking shiny and clean, but instead I looked more like a slightly charred sausage. (Oh yes, the sausage).

When Ida introduced us to the sauna experience at the residency, she advised us to bring a towel, a square of cloth to sit on, water to drink and… a sausage. “What do we do with the sausage?” I piped up in a slightly mischievous tone before our first visit, only to discover that some Finns bring sausages to the sauna to eat which they cook in a small hexagonal room while they are steaming. This is both efficient and pragmatic, especially considering that after five or six sauna-lake cycles you can end up feeling very hungry and your blood sugar levels can take a dive.

I collect new experiences the way some people collect objects and my Finnish public sauna experience has to be one of the highlights of my world travels so far.