On Finland’s frozen shores, a cabin by the Baltic Sea turns suffering into the sublime.
It’s freezing out. It must be minus 10°C – it certainly feels that way, at least. Helsinki’s wild winter winds are blowing frigid air from the city’s surrounding waterfront across the grid-like streets that make up the Old Town.
It’s winter here in the capital of Finland, and most places are deserted on a day like this. The streets are empty, restaurants sit hollow, bars only patronised by the fortunate few who can afford to nurse expensive pints in the warm embrace of a fireplace.
Helsinki is a small city; a cold, dark and expensive city, often far from the tourist trail for many visitors – even here in the Nordics, where Copenhagen and Stockholm stand out as livelier capitals. Finland somehow regularly tops the UN’s World Happiness Report, but there doesn’t seem to be much happiness right now, and the people that suffer through this environment often suffer because of it – the country also ranks as the second-most seasonally depressed globally.
But the Finns are also a resilient bunch, fiercely proud of their culture. Part of that is the invention of a regular respite from their circumstances, ironically embracing the setting at its most extreme: shutting themselves shoulder to shoulder in dimly-lit cabins darker than the winter night itself, and then sprinting into the hypothermia-cold Baltic Sea.
There’s a tamer variation abroad: the Finnish sauna experience. Here in its birthplace though, it’s a little different. More extreme in its contrasts, of course, more rustic and rural yes, but also a place of community and cooperation – where people bond by sweating it out.
Nowhere is that better demonstrated than at Sompasauna, a community-backed public sauna in Helsinki. Just a 10-minute drive from the old town, on a little green island connected to the city’s zoo, Sompasauna’s central hearth is forever burning – 24 hours a day, all year round. Entry is free, clothing is optional, and on a miserable Monday a week before Christmas, we spent an afternoon in its heated embrace.
Worn wooden signs and Google Maps guided us down quiet hiking paths in the bare midwinter forest, before a turn revealed a clearing by the water with three cabins (one being renovated), a couple of outhouse-like changing rooms, and lockers for valuables. The two crudely built cabins here come in two temperatures: hot and hotter. The general recommendation is spend no more than 10 minutes in each, before cooling down, preferably with a ‘cold plunge’.
We strip off in this dreary afternoon and hurry straight into the closest cabin. To most, the heat here would be excruciating; to the Finns, it’s the mildest of the bunch. This isn’t the pristine Finnish sauna experience we’ve experienced at hotel spas – soil and dirt layer the roughly hewn benches and floor, and the only light is the dimming winter sun shaded by stark trees from the cabin’s tiny window.
But there’s an undeniable sense of camaraderie here, too: a Syrian immigrant living in Helsinki for decades welcomes us warmly, an Indian university student and her visiting friend chat excitedly, while a group of three Finnish locals seem to serenely dissolve into the wooden walls. A veritable melting pot of cultures, where we all melt together.
And melt we do – Finnish saunas hover around 80 to 100°C, naturally pumped in from the furnace outside, an extreme dry heat that gets in your airways so you think you can’t inhale. We start to slow our breathing to accommodate, but within minutes, the heat starts to suffocate and becomes unbearable – we’re not used to it like the others, and we quickly stagger out.
Unsurprisingly it’s still freezing out, but the biting breeze now feels oh so relieving. The cabin door soon opens again and it’s one of the Finns; he dashes past us barefoot down the forest path, scurrying over the dark sand beach and into the icy Baltic Sea without a second thought. A spartan grit on his face as his body physically deals with this natural cold plunge, and when he emerges seconds later, he looks wholly refreshed.
Part of the experience, we reason with ourselves, strolling idly down the same path and beach, before dipping a foot into the sea. It’s shockingly, intolerably cold – literally ‘Baltic cold’ – like icy needles rammed into our feet, and we rush out and up back into the cabin.
The Syrian has advice: don’t overthink it, don’t dip your toes. Just run like hell right into the water. After a longer schvitz this time, we attempt it – a shoeless scamper down the path before a mad sprint into the sea. It’s only five seconds but it feels like a lifetime – try not to think and just let the water do its job.
When we emerge, the air feels balmy, almost pleasant. We stroll into the hottest cabin like we’re walking into a warm summer’s day. Our middle-aged aches feel soothed, our dispositions all the brighter. And there’s also a wry smile on the faces of the Finns now, like we’ve discovered the secret to their supposed ‘world happiness’.
The rest of the afternoon turns into a ritual of sorts. Ten minutes in a cabin, hot or hotter, oppressively sweating it out, idle chatter, gallons of drinking water, dirt clinging to our swimsuits and feet. Then, when it’s all too much, a sprint down the path and into the sub-zero waters. It’s refreshing, alleviating, healing.
“Did you enjoy the sauna?”, a soot-covered volunteer lugging wood asks after we get dressed. We can’t deny we did.
Here, in Helsinki’s miserable winter, in a makeshift cabin among the trees, people sit huddled together hot-boxed by a furnace that never stops burning, only self-extinguished by the natural waters that surround the country. It’s more than your everyday Finnish sauna and a cold plunge. It’s community resilience, building something sustainable and keeping the flames of culture going against the Nordic darkness – quite literally.
Entry: Free, but donations are encouraged.
Essentials: Flip flops and a standard lock for lockers; swimsuits are optional.
