The San Jose Mercury News earlier this week published a profile of life aboard the HMS Carlskrona – A Swedish warship currently deployed off the coast of Somalia to help in the battle against the pirates there.
One of the facilities available for the crew to relax in their off-duty hours is the ship’s onboard sauna:
Taking a steam together is an essential way of getting to know someone in much of Scandinavia, said Mika Raunu, a sailor in the Finnish navy. It’s in the same tradition of Scandinavian egalitarianism that sees officers sharing rooms with lower-ranking sailors.
It also has led to a few cultural misunderstandings.
Lt. Cmdr. Carl Sjostrand told of a Swedish captain who invited a U.S. admiral to meet his senior officers after a formal ship’s dinner. The American was led down to the sauna in full dress uniform—only to end up shaking hands with a line of sweaty, smiling and naked Swedish sailors.
Like all facilities, the saunas are used by both men and women, and the Swedish military does not segregate living quarters or bathrooms.
Welcome to all of you arriving from SodaHead! We’re so grateful to the SodaHead team for giving us a SODASTAR today for what we thought was just a humble little poll.
Thanks for taking the time to click through. If you like what you see, why don’t you subscribe to our Feed or by Email? If you’re looking for a place to see if you can take the heat, why not search for a sauna near you? Better yet, if you know of one we don’t have listed, tell us about it.
For anyone wondering what SodaHead is, it’s the service that hosts our polls, like the one sitting in the left sidebar there. (If you haven’t already, take a minute to vote and share your opinion on this pressing issue.) Every day, they pick a poll for each of their categories and feature it as the daily “SODASTAR.” From the looks of it, we beat out Phone-Sex Working Moms, Fat Burning Underwear, and The Mom Who Had Her 5-Year Old Arrested. Tough competition indeed!
Do you like your saunas hot? Really friggin’ hot? Then maybe you should consider entering the Sauna World Championships. They’ve been held in Heinloa Finland, a two hour bus ride from Helsinki, every August since 1999.
If you can get yourself to Finland this August 5-7, get a note from your doctor, and pay the € 50 entrance fee, you can add to the 137 men and 20 women from 22 countries who competed in 2008.
How hot is it? It’s 110°C / 230°F in there. If that isn’t hot enough, twice a minute an automatic shower dumps a half liter of water on the rocks of these specially constructed saunas. There’s no high-tech clothing that helps here: The rules allow the competitors to wear only a swimsuit, with strict regulations on the maximum size. The winners have to endure up to 4 qualifying rounds, each requiring the contestants to outlast their other competitors in the heat, taking from 4 to 13 minutes. The 2008 final took 17 minutes to decide the men’s winner.
If you can’t get an idea of what this feels like, American Sports journalist Rick Reilly competed in the 2007 World Sauna Championships, and describes his experience in his new book, Sports from Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition. There is an excerpt from it on ESPN.com. In it he describes his experience:
We went in, and it was so instantly, shockingly, insanely hot, my brain just stopped working. It was like walking into a bonfire and pulling up a chair in the middle of it. My strategy was to go in and keep time by the 30-second water splashes, but that plan was scrapped approximately seven seconds in. Thinking literally hurt. I tried to stare at the rocks and not blink, because blinking hurt. I tried to take very few breaths, because breathing hurt. I was sure flames were coming out of my mouth. My back seemed to have ignited. I was convinced my ears were literally on fire, but if I moved even slightly, they hurt more. I tried sitting up higher, but it was even hotter. I tried crouching down more, but then I was nearer to the unforgiving rocks. Then came the hideous, cruel, pitiless splashes of water, each one lasting three seconds. I was just about to bolt into the fresh air when — miraculously — the tall, skinny guy next to me ran out. Amazing! I wasn’t last! I had no idea how much time had elapsed — four minutes? Six? I promised myself: When I get to the point where I can no longer stand it, I’ll count 60 seconds and go.
Four seconds later, I decided I could no longer stand it.
So I started counting. One, two, three … It was the longest minute of my life. At 60 I went barreling out. Watching other heats, I’d wondered why even losers came out grinning and raising their hands in victory, but now I knew. The cool air was so beautiful, so redeeming, so life giving. You could French-kiss Osama bin Laden.
I looked at the clock. 3:10? That was it? When did the first guy bolt? “2:40,” I was told. Which meant I’d counted my 60 seconds in 30.
If you just want to watch the proceedings, admission costs € 15 each day.
We’ve added some new features over the weekend to make Saunascape more social! You can now comment on saunas in our Find-A-Sauna database you’ve visited and give them a star rating!
Commenting is done on the Disqus system. To make leaving a comment as easy as possible, you can log in through your Facebook, Yahoo, OpenId or Twitter accounts. Please give it a spin if you’ve got a favorite sauna that we’ve listed here.
We’ve also added star rankings for all the saunas. These don’t require you to be logged in at all. Click on the stars and your ratings will magically appear.
Finnish Embassy in Washington DC. Photo by NCinDC on Flickr
The Washington Post today published a piece on the monthly Power Schvitz by the Diplomatic Finnish Sauna Society of D.C. held in the basement of the Finnish Embassy. The Diplomatic Finnish Sauna Society, according to the article is more than 150 members strong, and includes many Washington insiders and the reporters that cover them.
The embassy began the sessions two years ago to compensate for Finland’s predictable reputation and low international profile. The organizer is Kari Mokko, the embassy’s press secretary.The reporter goes on to describe the sauna:
At first blush, the sauna does not feel so blistering. (“It’s got proper airflow so you don’t feel like somebody is putting a blowtorch in your face,” said Erik “Erkki” Lindstrom, who built the embassy sauna in 1994.) Its walls are built from Virginia pine logs, and its benches are made from boards of African obechi wood. (“It’s cool to sit on,” Lindstrom explained in a phone interview.) An electric heater in the corner warms 200 pounds of igneous rocks and, according to a thermometer on the wall, raises the room’s temperature to about 190 degrees.
The sauna is used in two separate sessions. One for the women, one for the men.
Most interesting is the reference to the Swede’s sauna.
Last week a tragedy ensued in Sedona Arizona leaving two people dead, three in critical condition and 16 more hospitalized after a sweat lodge experience as part of a multi-day “Spiritual Warrior” self-help seminar. Coverage of the incident has ranged from articles in the New York Times to CNN to TechCrunch.
According to the coverage of the event, up to 60 people took a session in a 1450 cubic foot sweat lodge for about 2 hours on Thursday night. Causes of death are still being speculated upon, and unlike your favorite crime show, may not be known for several months. Some things are known:
There was no temperature monitoring in the sweat lodge, so no-one really knows how hot it may have been.
The sweat lodge was constructed from plastic tarps and blankets, and does not appear to be well ventilated. 60 people in such a space could have easily brought the oxygen level below safe limits in under 15 minutes.
A two hour session is quite long for any kind of heat bath. There is a strong possibility that the participants suffered from dehydration and/or heat stroke in this situation.
The leader of this ceremony, who should by all rights be responsible for the health and well-being of the participants in the sweat lodge ceremony, had other motives, apparently tweeting after the incident, “JamesARay: is still in Spiritual Warrior… for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?”
How can you avoid being part of this same tragedy? Keep a few things in mind:
Lots of people are willing to say anything to get you to part with your money, and ritualistic experiences are a part of them. Consult the forums at New Age Frauds & Plastic Shamans before signing up for something like this.
Does the establishment you are going to use to participate in this ceremony have your well-being in mind? If, as Arizona ABC 15 reports, the event is “meant to push people’s personal limits and transcend pain,” but there isn’t a full physical for each participant and a trained medical team standing by, then you can be sure they don’t.
Heat baths can give real benefits if used with care. However, like most things, if basic common sense is ignored, they can be very dangerous.
S/S Silla setting the record as the world's fastest marine sauna
Sweden’s first floating hotel, the Salt & Sill recently announced another record: the marine speed record for a sauna at 15.5 knots.
Susanna Hermansson, Managing Director of the Salt & Sill says about the S/S Silla, the official name of the sauna boat:
The target was 15 knots, and we succeeded reaching that speed. It feels great and a bit mad, and of course I’m proud to be the owner of the world’s fastest floating sauna. It now remains to be seen whether anyone is brave enough to challenge our record, and we obviously welcome anyone who wants to take a sauna at 15.5 knots.
The record was recorded in early July during the finals at the Match Cup Sweden in Marstrand. The speed was confirmed via a GPS unit.
The 11.9 x 6.5 meter (39 x 21 foot) building is made of lightweight fiberglass and secured to a catamaran platform, which is powered by two 160 hp diesel engines from Volvo Penta. A total of 4.5 million SEK (About US$650,000) has been invested in the sauna boat, which can also be used as a relax area, conference room, exhibition venue, or wedding suite. The sauna can usually be found at its home-berth, adjacent to the hotel on Klädesholmen, near Goethenburg.
Rooms at the Salt & Sill start at SEK 1290 (US$ 185) per night. Bookings can be made by contacting the hotel directly.
The CBC reports of a new law just passed in China: The “Female Sauna Safety
Bath non-users at a Spa in Shanghai. Photo by Thomas Tribe on Flickr
Regulation.” According to their report:
Last month, certain inspectors informed western hotels, which offer luxurious spa and sauna services, that women were no longer allowed to take baths.
Showers? No problem. Baths? No way.
Officials explained that once a month women are afflicted with a certain bodily metamorphosis that could result in “undesired excretions.”
The rules, instituted as China prepares to celebrate its 60th birthday, are seen by the author as the old ways of New China. Other newly established regulations include license requirements for fresh squeezed orange juice, and a prohibition on showing any western news in a public area of a hotel. Keep in mind that TVs on exercise equipment in a public gym are included in this regulation.
Since we started this site, we’ve been building a database of saunas throughout the world. We’ve been looking for a way to share them with you, and had never found an easy way that met our goals.
Until now that is. Thanks to the excellent Pods plugin for WordPress, we’re now able to share more of this information with you.
We’ve added Find a Sauna to our menu. As of today, our database is pretty light, with only 7 entries, but our goal is to continue loading them slowly until our full listing is available for you to enjoy.
We’ll call this a public beta. It’s far from done yet, and there are still a lot of tasks that we’d like to do on this before calling it “done.” However, we think that you can get some value from this, even in its rough state.
Of course, if you have a favorite sauna, please use our Submit a Sauna link to let us know about it.
. There is an excerpt from it on 
Entries (RSS)