Finnish sauna is a place of calming down, relaxing and recharging. It is an essential part of the cold long winter. At cottages it is a place for showering or cleaning ones self because it can be the only place around the mökki (cottage) where you get warm water with the help of the hot stones of the kiuas (the heater). Thus there can be a water tank in connection with the heater. It is usually heated with wood, but a lot of times there are electric heaters in public saunas or in the more modern home saunas wich almost every finnish household has. Very often saunas are built near a lake, where one can go for a cool down. In the winter there is the possibility for ice swimming.
In order to have a whole in the ice of the lake for ice swimming, there usually is some sort of water pump so the ice would not freeze and close again on that part. There are a lot of health benefits of ice swimming and sauna and it has become more and more popular in Finland aswell. You can have your own saunahat, neoprene shoes and gloves for this, that protect you from the cold, but also from the hotness of the sauna.
I think sauna tells about Finnish culture, that we can make the best of a long cold winter, but also how the make the winter more survivable and have a warm place for washing, even if we don´t need it for a primary way of cleaning in the modern day, it has a culturally collective and nostalgic affect.
One of my hobbies have been going to sauna and ice swimming for the last 3 years, and is has been the best hobby, especially in Tampere wich is Finland´s capital city of public saunas. I think this represents well how finns make the best of the nature connection and how the whole concept is used for relaxing and reloading. It is also a social event, where you can feel included in a community if you go to a public sauna.
This leads us well to finnish nature. Finland has one of the most beatiful and cleanest forests in the world. We have wild and arctic nature aswell, and superfoods can be found, that are worth to get to know. The finnish forest is full of everything that one can go foreging or even hunt.
Finland is a country of a thousand lakes, that is a huge privilegde to live in. The cleanliness of nature and the lakes are at a level that one can go swim in practically any lake. This represents finland very well and the culture of having the connection to nature wich is so special. The forest provides so many things, and I see it as a part of my finnish identity. It is a place of calming down, exercise, family events or parties outside, cooking in the wild or even at a cottage yard in the middle of nature, foraging for free and storing food for the winter. Foraging is something special, because finland has something called as “jokaisenoikeus” wich basically means the right for everyone to forage for berries, mushrooms and more anywhere (above what is ground level are excluded, and have to have the permission of the land owner). In nature conservation areas one can not collect wild herbs, but everything else is approved.
I think both of these things are irreplaceable, and I am thankful to live in a country where all of this and this kind of nature connection is possible.
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