How to take an authentic Finnish sauna:
1. Build a sauna that is nicer than your house, cottage or any cabin you have ever been in. Be sure to include a fancy changing room and a dock to jump into your private lake.
Changing room- get naked!
2. Start the wood furnace in the sauna to bring the temperature up to +100 C.
3. Get naked.
4. Be sure to grab your butt towel to sit on. You don’t want to get butt sweat all over your nice cedar benches!
Grab that butt towel and get sweaty!
5. Sweat. A lot.
6. Add water to rocks when you aren’t quite sweating enough to create hyvӓt (good) lӧylyt (Finnish word specifically for sauna heat).
7. Sweat. More Sweat.
8. Jump in lake to cool off.
9. Go sweat some more.
10. If you are extra-fancy and a bit hungry, hang up your makkara (sausage) grill above the kiuas (sauna rocks) to cook your dinner.
11. (No showers at your accommodation?!)… You shampoo/soap up in the sauna and then jump in the lake.
Loppi jarvi (Lake Loppi)
12. After you do your final cool-off in the lake, a sauna beer is required!
13. Put clothes back on. (This step is optional.)
Fun fact: There are 3.3 million saunas per 5 million people in Finland.
-Anne, Cara and Sara