We had 10 saunas during our trip, the pride of our Estonian hosts, often, the centre piece of their homes. The Estonian word is saun, and this social wellbeing institution may be this small country’s greatest contribution to global culture. (The Finns probably know something about it; more on the parallels in a later blog.)
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood documents a sauna tradition in southern Estonia, registered as intangible cultural world heritage of humanity with UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Social and Cultural Organisation. “Something magical happens when you're there, naked in the darkness, with this community around you,” a sauna sister says. “And when you share something, nobody starts to teach. When you share, another listens, and that is a huge power. That is part of the healing itself."
Our experience was more prosaic, even so, arresting, unforgettable. While cycling Greg spent his thinking hours designing saunas for construction back in New Zealand. Whatever the type, a sauna is a wood-lined cuboid space to sit in, arranged in rows, one bench higher than another, naked, sitting on towels, in dim light, heated usually with a wood stove, hours in the preparation.
Cousin Inga’s husband Arvet has a sauna every day after moving timber at the sawmill where he works. A broad smile on his face, he shows us door after door filled to the ceiling with split birch and other firewood in a building of his construction the size of a small aircraft hangar. At 70C, the sauna is ready. We strip, hang up our clothing, have a quick warm shower in an anteroom, and then step inside, and in the dry air we start to sweat. Greg picks up a ladle, dunks it in a bucket of water, and pours it on hot stones arranged around the chimney flue. A rush of steam, and we wait for the hit. A wall of steam strikes our bodies: I feel searing heat on my lips and eyelids, and turn inwards, into my soul; time stands still. I feel the presence of my father, my grandmother, my ancestors, a ritual going back hundreds and thousands of years in this ancient land.
Eventually we surface, exit, shower quickly, wrap towels around our middle, pass through the living room where our family are relaxing, out to a small swimming pool and into the cold water, plunging our heads below surface, lying under the northern hemisphere stars, inert, weightless. The minutes pass, and then time for a beer, and this may be the best part. We join Inga, Arvet and family on sofas, drinking cans of Alexander or Le Coq lager beer, an overwhelming sense of relaxation sinking into the bones, feeling one with the people around us and our surroundings. Another round in the sauna, Inga continuing to stoke the fire, another dunking in the pool, more beer, and then to sleep, a dreamless sleep.
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