Tuesday 12 March 2024

September Scandinavian Sauna Saga

I give notice now that i won't be around in September because we will be off on a tour of Scandinavia from Denmark through Sweden and Norway then across Lapland (Hi Santa) and into Finland.
It will probably be too soon for snow but the Northern Lights should put on a show at some point which is pretty much the reason we are going and not as my husband seem to thinks, to partake in a Sauna.
One of the places we are visiting is Tampere, north of Helsinki, which boasts 60 public saunas earning it the title of 'sauna capital of the world'   but most houses in Finland have a sauna, 3.3 million in a population of 5.6 million, and communal sauna's are as common as pubs here and Finland frequently
top the world happiness report rankings so could it's sauna culture have anything to do with it?
Apparently the health benefits of a sauna are that they detoxify, increase metabolism, increase blood circulation, reduce pain, rejuvenates skin, improve cardiovascular function and immune function, improve sleep, reduces stress and relax you which is a pretty decent return for sitting in steam for as long as you
can stand it.
That fact that the tradition of Sauna's stretch back to the first settlements after the ice age are are still going strong now means that they must be doing something right so i will probably give it a go at least once just so i can say i actually did an authentic Scandinavian Sauna but being a reserved British lady, its going to be a one-piece swim-suit or if the policy is completely nuddy, a very smokey one.