Back from the Sauna

We spent last week at an Architecture "retreat" site on Kiljava lake about 40 km north of Helsinki. This was a large wooded area on a beautiful, shallow, spring fed lake. The land was donated to SAFA (the Finnish and Swedish version of the American AIA) around the time of WWII. Land was available for architects to build very small summer cabins on and a main building, with water and a shower, constructed where a number of people could gather and stay. The cabins had to be less than 45 square meters in size, basically a medium sized apartment in Helsinki and a small one in the US. They have no running water. But the point was to come and stay and socialize in the saunas with other architects. The cabins could be passed down through the family, but only to children who were also members of SAFA. So if you kid became something less than an architect... like the CEO of some big company or something, they had to go out and buy their own summer home somewhere else. If the cabin reverted into SAFA hands it became available for rent to architects.

We split into groups and each was assigned a sauna house to measure and draw images of. Our sauna was an old log cabin on the opposite side of the lake. It was a traditional "smoke sauna". These saunas had no chimney. You build a fire in the stove, it fills with smoke and heat, and about six hours later your return and open it up, let the smoke out, and do your saunaing. Remember that the houses on the lake didn't have running water so saunas are both an important part of bathing and socializing there. The saunas smell like birch wood. There are specific ways of heating them up, some people start with one sort of wood and then finish heating with a different one depending on how the wood burns.

So you come in the evening, it is dark inside this low log cabin. There is a changing room to take off your clothing, you sit in the sauna room on wooden slated benches up near the ceiling. There is a window to the side with a small oil lantern hanging outside, spreading a dim light into the room. The stove is covered with a layer of rocks and you throw ladles of water onto them to create steam and further heat the space to the desired temperature. Which is *very* hot! There will also be a water bucket and a bundle of birch branches tied at the base. Freshly cut branches with leaves still on them. You wack yourself all over with the birch branches to increase the circulation at the skin. When you are ready to leave, you walk out the door, down to the dock, and jump into the lake. The lake is only about 4 feet deep here and pretty cold. Very fresh clean water at Kiljava. I found the best way to get in was just to do a flat dive out into the lake. Putting one toe in at a time didn't work.

After a few minutes in the lake the water becomes tolerable again. You hang out there or climb out on the dock and sit and watch the twilight because it is summertime and the sun doesn't really go down until midnight (a month ago it was still light at 1 or 2 am). And then you go back in and do it all again! I have to say, it never got any easier to jump into the lake afterward!

More Photos Here!