by Alexia Brue
I stepped out into the early evening air of Helsinki to find an emissionless bus that seamlessly transported me back to city center. Life in Finland was exceptionally easy after all the challenges of Russia, and the women of the Finnish Sauna Society were a much tamer bunch than the Sandunovskye crowd. No one had Natasha the banshitsa's verve, Gallia's candor ('Russian men are all pigs'), gold-capped teeth, or felt hats. Could a society really be this even-keeled, or did the Finns just internalize their dysfunction, while the Russians made no attempt to hide their madness?
That evening, fresh from my excursion to Lauttasaari, I went out for a drink and dinner, on the prowl for intriguing people watching and feeling surprisingly nostalgic for St Petersburg. I struck up a conversation with the waitress about the few remaining public saunas in Helsinki — they are almost extinct - and a few minutes later a man approached my table and said, 'I couldn't help but overhear you asking about saunas. May I offer you some advice?'
'Yes, please,' I said. 'Have a seat.'
Bjorn had the bearings and reserved charm of a spy, though he introduced himself as a caterer. He wore a thick navy turtleneck sweater that flattered his eyes and his torso.
'Have you heard about Sauna Island?' he asked.
'You're joking, right?' Finland was more saturated with saunas than I could ever have imagined, and the mention of a Sauna Island stretched my credulity almost to breaking point.
'No, I'm quite serious. It's a new development started by an acquaintance of mine, Rainer Hilihatti. In fact, at this moment he's putting the finishing touches on it, because in two weeks a huge group will be going out there for this ridiculous Sauna of the Month program.'
'You don't sound like a supporter.'
'Another stupid marketing ploy, just like this European City of Culture business. Anyway, here's Rainer's card. You should call him, I'm sure he'd give you a tour. What he's done is very impressive.'
'What has he done?'
'He managed to get a very cheap thirty-year lease on this island that the city of Helsinki has been trying to develop forever. He renamed it Sauna Island and started building all different kinds of saunas. I think he has five of them, one even floating on a boat.'
It was an odd encounter. After handing me the card, Bjorn returned to his table and companion on the other side of the dining room. I pondered the Finnish efficiency of carrying other people's cards in your wallet to hand out — this was the third time someone had, on the spur of the moment, pulled out a sauna-related card. Yesterday, through another random meeting, I'd learned about SaunaBar, a nightclub with a public sauna, and about café Tin Tin Tango, a café, Laundromat, and sauna in one where you can wash your clothes and then your body.
The next morning, I called Rainer on his cell phone. As luck would have it, Rainer was near the harbor, the unpronounceable Eteläsatama, about to cast off and motor to Sauna Island to check construction progress, and taking me for a journalist - I didn't correct him — he invited me along. My hair still wet, I made a mad dash to the harbor.
Rainer was an ageing matinee idol: brushed-back brownish red hair, a tanned face with character-enhancing wrinkles, and quiet blue eyes. To smooth over my own jitters, and out of fear that he might realize I was not, in fact, a journalist, I immediately started plying him with questions in my aggressive American way; then I gave up and just enjoyed the private three-kilometer boat ride across the sun-kissed waves in the gulf, with the breeze lifting my hair. I wore sunglasses. I didn't need coffee to feel good. This was my wake-up call. In his small silver motorboat, we buzzed past the huge Silja and Viking ocean liners standing guard in the gulf. They were so massive with their fifteen floors of cabins, casinos, and bars that they dwarfed the city behind it, sending Helsinki into dollhouse relief.
Sauna Island took the Finnish Sauna Society fantasy one step further. In Finnish sauna hierarchy, the more remote the sauna the better, and Sauna Island's boat-only access elevated it to the height of sauna chic. As we neared the small dock, I heard the sound of chain saws and hammering. All I could see through the woods were several outcroppings of log cabins and a huge Japanese soaking tub right next to the waterline.
Four of the five saunas were completed and had already been used for parties and events. In fact, Sauna Island's main business would come from corporations and groups that came out here for retreats. The masterpiece, the forty-person savusauna with an octagonal stove, had yet to be finished.
'This savusauna had one hundred kilos of rocks - imagine! — and will seat forty,' Rainer said proudly, 'but we have to have it ready in two weeks. We already have over one hundred bookings for Sauna of the Month.' I am no expert in construction, but judging from the fact that the structure was still being erected, a ribbon cutting just two weeks away struck me as a tad optimistic.
Rainer showed me around the island. He had colonized a small nook of the island with his sauna village, and he was the reigning king, his daughter and son-in-law the administrators who kept the saunas warm. It was a little Club Med devoted to the sole activity of sauna. The view was of Helsinki, scarred by oil drums and a refinery that were supposed to disappear within the next ten years; hence the cheap rent.
'I'm looking forward to coming back for your grand opening,' I said. 'Do you really think the savusauna will be finished?'
'It has to be.'
• • •
I heard Reeta before I saw her. 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders,' then faster like the firing of artillery: 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders . . .' The staccato homing pattern of a mother goose. Axel and Anders were her six- and four-year-old sons, mischievous little rays of sunshine running around the ice-cream parlor.
I approached them. 'Reeta? Hello.'
'Oh, you found us,' she said, sounding surprised. I'd never met Reeta or even seen a picture of her. She was about thirty, with short bobbed blond hair, wide-set blue eyes, a small, freckled nose, and a clear, pink-cheeked complexion. Her clothes were tidy and practical. She was what the world expected of a Finnish woman.
'I followed the Axel, Anders refrain,' I joked, and hugged her in what seemed like excessive affection for Finland; but my parents were Axel's godparents, so it seemed to me an appropriate gesture. I was reminded of a cartoon that depicts a Finn in eight different emotional states from exhilaration to utter despair. The expression in all eight frames is identical. Reeta returned my hug awkwardly and then quickly suggested the most efficient way to get ice cream. 'You watch the boys at that table over there and I'll get the ice cream.'
Axel and Anders danced around the ice-cream shop, their blond hair flying, button noses upturned, making silly faces. I almost found myself saying, 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders,' in an attempt to control them. Their mother might have the one-note emotional range of a Finn, but their father, who was a close friend of my family's in Vermont, was an Italian American. Their dance around the ice-cream shop would have gone over better in Naples than in Helsinki. Reeta arrived carrying a tray of ice cream and two coffees. The Finns practically mainline coffee, drinking 9.2 cups a day on average.
'I invite you and your boyfriend out to the country with me and the boys,' she said, getting right to the point. Chitchat is not a Finnish art. 'My mother's house is in southern Karelia and you can experience a real Finnish country sauna. Would you like that?' I accepted her offer gratefully, and we set a date for next weekend, the day after Charles arrived from New York. Charles would enjoy a weekend in the country, I thought, and he could stare across the border into Russia. Reeta suggested that I come out to her house in Espoo - a separate municipality, but as far as I could tell, a suburb of Helsinki — to have a little dinner with her and the boys.
In her silver Volvo, during the twenty-minute drive to the wooded Arcadian Espoo, the rambunctious Axel and Anders were inspiring an endless battery of'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders.' I began to hallucinate about what a four-hour drive to southern Karelia with Charles and me scrunched between the car seats might feel and sound like. We arrived at Reeta
's condo. The floor was littered with toys, mostly LEGO from a recent trip to LEGOLAND in Denmark. Reeta showed me around, including the upstairs bathroom, where instead of a pedestrian tub and shower there was a sauna unit with a shower inside. Through the glass door I could see the two tiny wood-slatted benches.
'Boys and I take a sauna here every other day,' Reeta informed me. 'They love it.'
Axel concurred by chanting, 'Sauna, sauna, sauna,' with an enthusiasm most children reserve for sugar and toy guns.
'I first took Axel in the sauna when he was six weeks old,' Reeta said. 'I covered him with a damp towel, and we stayed for just a few minutes.'
'It's so little. Can you get comfortable in there?' I asked.
Axel opened the door and perched on the bench, where he demonstrated 'sauna position': legs spread slightly, arms resting on thighs, head bowed in religious observance. In his five-year-old sauna reverence, he was suddenly more Finn than Italian.
Anders ran in. 'Sauna? Are we taking sauna?'
'Maybe later tonight. Right now we are showing Alexia what a little apartment sauna looks like. Do you want to show her how you sit in the sauna?'
Anders jumped up next to Axel, assumed sauna position, and they sat, hunched over and serene, like two little blond Buddhas. Anders grabbed the wooden bucket and ladle and demonstrated. 'It's my job to throw water on the rocks,' he said, ladling invisible water on the tiny electric heater topped with several layers of grayish black rocks, 'and steam goes ssssssssss and makes the sauna soft.' Impressive, even a preschooler could articulate the sauna phenomenon.
I decided to take a bus back into Helsinki after dinner. The sun was still high in the sky at eight-thirty as I waited at a bus station that seemed buried in the middle of a forest. It was hard to believe that Espoo is the second largest city in Finland after Helsinki. A huge bus rolled by, filled with stacks of books. The lady next to me explained that it was a traveling library that delivered books to remote areas of Finland. 'This is why our taxes are so high,' she said dourly. Utopia doesn't come cheap.
Reeta issued our marching orders. Take the train from Helsinki to Imatra, where she and the boys would collect us for the rest of the eastward journey into the Karelian countryside, stopping just shy of the Russian border. Charles, newly arrived and sleep-deprived, dreamed of a relaxing weekend in the country punctuated by naps, a sauna, and an occasional walk. I planned to dip into the Kalevala, Finland's national epic, inhabited by heroes with names like Väinämöinen (Zeus' Finnish cousin) and Lemminkäinen, an Arctic Casanova. Reeta could spend time with her boys. We prided ourselves on being low-maintenance guests.
The verbal air-raid siren started before hello: 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders, make room for Charles and Alexia.' Charles smiled, eyes rolling back in his head from fatigue. 'Sauna is the best cure for jet lag,' Reeta informed him.
While the weekend wasn't as tightly scheduled as the first day of basic training, as guests of Reeta's we did have certain obligations to hop to whenever a new opportunity for Finnish cultural education presented itself:
11:40 — Grocery shopping in Imatra.
1:10 — 'Axel, Anders, Alexia, Charles, time to heat the sauna. Come on, everyone.'
Charles looked at me desperately and popped two Advil. We traipsed across the lawn to a log cabin, carrying kindling and firewood. Reeta explained in minute detail how the sauna worked. Charles slumped on a sauna bench, and I nodded enough for the both of us.
1:20 - The preparation of lunch.
2:15 — Sauna time.
We went in shifts, Charles and me, then Reeta and the boys. When we were finally alone in the soundproof sauna, Charles said, 'I feel like I'm at camp. I don't know how many more scheduled activities I can take.'
'She's trying to give us a flavor of Finland. We should be grateful,' I said.
'I'd prefer a gradual induction as opposed to total immersion. I think I heard her say something about going to a traditional dance tonight.'
'Very funny. I'm sure things will calm down tonight.'
4:40 - Reeta announced that her friend Mariella, who possessed a postcard beautiful lakeside sauna, had invited us over for an evening session. We threw together a picnic of beer and sausages, boarded the Volvo, and drove down narrow dirt roads deep into formerly Soviet territory. Mariella lived alone with her loom and her dogs in a treehouse perched high above the lake. The cabin didn't have running water or electricity. The outhouse was up by the dead-end road that was her driveway, and the sauna was down by Lake Saima. Mariella may not have had much in the way of earthly possessions, but she had a fine sauna.
4:50 - Reeta announced a vasta-making lesson. We all headed off, clippers in hand, to collect as many leafy birch twigs as possible. Charles returned with three, I had about ten, and Reeta an entire armload full. When we set about creating the birch whisks - following instructions to line up the tops of the branches and to make sure the leaves faced the same way — I told Reeta about the veyniks used inside the Russian banyas. Banya and veynik were new words to her. Reeta, like most Finns, had no concept that the Russians had a similar bathing tradition. Generations of internecine Karelian warfare and swaps of this territory has made the Finns much more eager to discuss their dissimilarities to the Russians than to recognize any kindred customs.
5:00—8:00 — Charles was won over by the country sauna spectacle. A merry-go-round of swimming, sauna, swimming, drinking beer. Shampooing our hair in the lake, beating each other with vastas, total tranquillity.
The next morning at 8:00, Axel and Anders jumped into bed with us. In her efficient Finnish way, Reeta threw together a traditional breakfast of gravlax, assorted whitefishes, piles of dill rye bread, and rivers of coffee. Charles said, 'Reeta, thank you for a most delightful day yesterday. We don't want to put you out at all, so really, don't worry about us today. We'll just read and maybe take a walk.'
'It's not an inconvenience for me at all. I love showing you Finnish culture. Today I thought you might like to see the cabin that my mother is building.'
'That sounds wonderful,' I said before Charles could get a word out.
Getting to the cabin required forty minutes of trekking through felled timber groves, swatting flies, and tripping over mushroom patches, with Reeta stopping us for mandatory berry tasting. 'That looks poisonous,' I said.
'It's not. I'm a Finn. I know berries. Eat it.'
When we finally reached the cabin, set back from a small lake in a young grove of spruce trees, Charles asked, 'And how does the refrigerator get here?' We New Yorkers, with narrow hallways and six-story walk-ups, are fixated on the installation of appliances.
'No refrigerator, no electricity, no running water. This is her country house,' Reeta explained.
Charles and I exchanged baffled glances. Most would consider the other house where we were spending the weekend to be a country house. But in Finland, the true ideal of a country house means no lights, no flushable toilets, and no phone lines. But invariably a sauna, and hopefully a savusauna.
The second day of our weekend in the country followed similarly frenetic lines, but by then we had adjusted to Reeta's frequency, though we still hadn't adjusted to the flurry of 'Axel, Anders, Axel, Anders, boys, where are you . . . boys, come here . . . boys, don't climb on Charles.' One thing Charles and I were in complete agreement about: We could not endure the four-hour drive back to Helsinki. An hour into the ride, Charles's near perfect temperament was showing the first signs of fracturing. His innate sense of fun displaced by a very practical request, he asked, 'Reeta, it's pretty tight back here. Maybe you could just drop us off at the train station.' We spent the next two days recovering.
Charles and I had seen a lot of saunas in the last two weeks. We'd been up to Kuopio and watched the sunset from inside the world's largest savusauna, men and women together wrapped in togas covered in the savusauna's telltale soot. We'd spent a morning with Hanu the sauna major, drinking coffee and throwing alder wood into the 700-degree-Fahrenheit fir
e. Charles had had his own experience out in Lautasaari with the men of the Finnish Sauna Society and reported it lovely but lonely. Everyone was very quiet, drinking their beer, talking occasionally in Finnish. Charles remembered a joke he'd been told before coming to Finland: How do you spot an extroverted Finn? When conversing with you, he's actually looking at your feet instead of his own.
And now, two weeks after my excursion with Rainer Hilihatti, Sauna Island was about to make its Sauna of the Month debut. As soon as we arrived at the harbor to catch a water taxi, I recognized people from the society. I waved to Sinikka. This was the sauna social event of the month. 'Charles, we're in with the sauna cognoscenti,' I whispered. They all looked cheerful and expectant.
'Sinikka, everyone looks so excited,' I said curiously.
'I know, we're all very excited to see Rainer's saunas. Also, no one much liked last month's Sauna of the Month. The Suomenlinna military sauna was too humid and soggy.' With all the excitement and anticipation in the air, I felt like a wine connoisseur on the way to taste the first Beaujolais nouveau. The only person not looking happy and relaxed was Rainer, who was talking with the water taxi captain and looking at his watch nervously.
The forty-person water taxi was filled to capacity, and twenty-five people were still standing on the dock. I was witnessing the Finns at their most aggressive. Rainer's eyes had retreated far into their sockets. I walked over to him and asked, 'Hur mår du?' He looked over to see who was speaking Finnish so badly. 'Did you finish the savusauna?' I asked.
'Yes.' He smiled, and I noticed beads of sweat across his hairline. 'We tested it for the first time last night at one A.M. My son-in-law is sweeping the sawdust away right now.'
I congratulated him, delighted by the notion that finishing a sauna on time could take on the urgency of a space race.