Here you can read about my musings on the sauna experience and the sauna design and building process. Some of the information will be practical, some will be wispy and esoteric like the steam of the löyly rising from the hot rocks. Happy sauna-ing! Subscribe to our newsletter to get new blog posts via email or find us on @instagram and @facebook
Recently, on our return trip after delivering one of our mobile saunas to a location south of Boston, we visited the old sauna camp at UKTS in Pembroke. Uljas Koitto (“Brave dawn”) Temperance Society (UKTS), was founded in 1890 in Quincy, Massachusetts.1 The sauna and camp on Furnace Pond started in 1926. The temperance movement was popular at the time in the US and elsewhere and eventually led to the Prohibition Era. It is refreshing to know that temperance (the abstinence from alcohol) is still practiced in many places, including UKTS. The challenges of life that many hard-working Finns endured at the end of the nineteenth century made it essential to have access to a place that was free from excess with a cleansing sauna—especially since many had no other way to bathe.
As it was then, sauna is still the perfect antidote to many of modern life’s excesses.
After email introductions in the weeks prior, UKTS members Kurt, Audrey, Kenny, and John enthusiastically greeted us when we arrived for a tour on Friday. The camp reminded us of the great Adirondack camps open for tours where the clocks stopped a hundred years ago. But also of an intimate family cottage, passed down through many generations, with mementos on every wall and in every nook and cranny. Entry into the spacious main lodge was through the kitchen, which contained two massive vintage wood-fired cook stoves that gave credence to the stories of a full roster of members crowding the dining hall after the Saturday sauna. Audrey showed us the many bedrooms upstairs available to members for overnight or week-long stays. Each was appointed with a specific monochromatic color palette of fabric and furniture in a timeless way. I felt I was in Finland, far away from the generic American consumer-frenzy-driven design aesthetic. Audrey, Kenny’s wife, had hand-picked all the items from various flea markets and other low budget sources—typical of the Finnish Pragmatic Design that I admire and strive for in our saunas.
Each room relieved the eyes and the soul.
John pointed out photos and news clippings about past members that lined the common room walls: parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. Current members had to be distant cousins, at the least. There were also photos of athletic events held at the camp, inspired by a local Olympian. These reminded me of my days at Podunk, training for ski marathons with the help of former Olympian Jack Lufkin. During that phase we integrated daily saunas into our Nordic skiing workouts.
Finally, we got to explore the sauna: one of the most authentic Finnish-style group saunas I have ever seen. It is a long, low affair, reminiscent of bunk houses and dining halls at any summer camp. There is a symmetry to its design with men and women entering from opposite ends. Both hot rooms are fired from the center with a new, massive, twelve-hundred-pound steel stove (Kiuas). Almost center, that is; careful investigation revealed that the stove was off center by quite a bit, favoring the men’s side.
The stove holds an equally hefty pile of sauna rocks—the one product imported from Finland. Amusingly, the saunas are connected by a small door, to be used only in emergencies. I can only imagine the mischief this might inspire in a less reserved group. The exterior siding is Pine Cove shiplap, which has that classic rustic camp look, painted green to harmonize with its woodsy surroundings. (Many of my sauna builds have this same siding.)
There are no plate glass windows or dark stained imported woods, no glass doors or polished stainless steel, and no fancy tile work. The sauna is basic and functional: a dressing room with benches, cubbies, and hooks for clothes; a shower room with plain white wall tile; duckboards on the floor; and shelves for soap and shampoos. The hot room has several tiers of benches made of crude pine 2×8’s, just like the sauna I grew up with. Most telling of the care that went into the sauna was that on our tour day, Friday, the duckboards were propped up to dry, the windows and doors were open for ventilation, and the place smelled clean and fresh. Members are divided into four teams, each team taking a week of the month to maintain the sauna, including the weekly ritual of prepping and firing, as well as cleaning it afterward. Unlike most public and gym saunas, which tend to be dark musty affairs, you could sense the members’ pride in its maintenance.
We returned the following day for Saturday sauna—a tradition going back almost one hundred years. We were welcomed with the same congeniality. After briefly socializing, we headed to the sauna, Scarlet to her side, me to mine.
There was a moment of apprehension at this point: we’d been separated for the first time in days, each entering a foray of strangers. Yet, at the same time, there was an incredible familiarity in the hot room. Sauna is a ritual that Scarlet and I have known and loved for years. The only awkwardness was over clothing—to go nude or not. Despite being instructed on the local custom (nude inside was OK, outside was not), I wore a bathing suit. It felt strange to have fabric between heat and body, bench and butt. But we weren’t in Finland. Americans long ago succumbed to the oddness of swim-suit sauna baths.
Inside, the heat was just right, hot by my standard, but airy. I lingered, perhaps too long, in jovial conversation. I wasn’t the youngest one present, but the years were weighted heavily beyond mine. Charlie and his slightly younger brother recalled their first saunas at UKTS in the early ’50s—and their recent hockey games! The women were fourth and fifth generation members and still taking sauna every Saturday. They were eager to share the history of UKTS and had many lovely stories of their experiences in the Finnish community. Scarlet and I were welcome and known by our business. Folks asked a lot about our sauna projects. The recognition was nice, but I’m sure they would extend the same warmth to anyone.
“All are welcome to come” via invitation, and they hold the time-honored Finnish belief that “everyone is equal in sauna.” The organization also hosts community events including Queer nights and AA meetings at the camp. They encourage new members and continue to share the Finnish sauna experience with others.
After each round, we dipped in the lake. The water was clear and just cool enough to offer a refreshing jolt but not prohibit lingering. If Scarlet and I timed our rounds just right, we met in the lake. After several rounds of sweating and dunking, we relaxed on wooden benches on the shore, snacking on a fruit plate provided by the week’s working group. There was no plastic furniture or other evidence of our disposable culture at the camp. A nice detail we reflected upon later. Although I’m pretty good at pinning dates on when things were made, there were no clues (other than the new Kiuas) that spoke of the twenty-first century or even the second half of the twentieth.
The experience was timeless. As were the people.
We had a planned stop on the western side of the state that evening, so we had to rush off after two hours; otherwise, we could have basked in the warmth of the UKTS camp for hours, enjoying good food and conversation and surrendering ourselves to sauna time.
Epilogue: Later, discussing our experience, I learned from Scarlet that although the men’s side was pretty darn hot (220°), the women’s, not so. It turns out that the new stove, a beast welded up by DC Welding in Ipswich, NH, was placed in the same location as the old stove, which was offset toward the men’s side. This means that the women’s side is always cooler than the men’s. I appreciate that UKTS honors tradition, but there are some traditions that are worth tweaking.
NOTES:
1. The Uljas Koitto Temperance Society (Noble Endeavor Temperance Society) promotes temperance and healthy living through the benefits and virtues of the traditional Finnish sauna. Founded by Finnish immigrants in 1892, UKTS provides an environment free of the influence of drugs and alcohol. The UKTS is a membership organization and not open to the public. They are a welcoming society and invite those interested in learning more about the UKTS to use the Visit Us form on their website.
During the first weekend of May we held another incredible sauna building class at the Rob Licht Custom Saunas shop with participants coming from as far away as Tennessee. It was a jam-packed four days, as I went over everything sauna related from layout and design and function of the sauna to installing cedar tongue and groove as well as bench, window, and door details. We capped each day with a sauna and even took the mobile sauna down to the lake for a Friday evening picnic.
We were lucky to have two projects underway in the shop for demonstration, and students got a chance to practice a little hands-on building. We also offered several small informational projects so everyone could see close up how details like chimney assembly and stucco firewalls come together. By the time everyone departed on Sunday we had made a group of new friends.
During the Pandemic, access to public gathering spots was denied and people rearranged their lives around home. Many worked at home and most, no doubt, played at home and socialized at home. When the dust settled, people saw advantages to this reclaimed space in their lives. Home improvement contractors and suppliers, including me, were big winners in this collective adjustment. My phone has not stopped ringing since 2019.
The home gym market has become a strong area of growth for sauna culture. Even now, when most public gyms are back in full swing after a few years of cautious access (including restricted sauna use), people still approach public gyms with trepidation. Tight, airless locker rooms, equipment shared by hundreds of people, and saunas with a little too much patina all went from being tolerable to a complete turn-off. A shoulder injury while riding my road bike has sidelined my stationary pedaling to recliner bikes at my local Y. Sitting in a room full of people breathing heavily, in isolated headphone bubbles, is not what I call exercise bliss. The facility’s sauna can’t begin to approach the rich experience I write about in these posts. I avoid it completely.
So, it is no surprise that those with the means are investing in their homes and building elaborate gyms with saunas and even pools, where exercise and sauna can be a blissful experience. Where one knows they are breathing only their own air in a space that has been cleaned to their standards and where they can sit meditatively in the sauna and not feel the whoosh, whoosh of the treadmill on the floor above. The blue light screens of illicit cell phones are gone, and conversations with random strangers can’t stray into political abrasiveness.
After the pandemic gave people pause and the opportunity to reflect upon what is essential in this life, it is no wonder that I have been so busy helping people realize this vision of a home sauna. Sauna is essential just as is control over your own health and fitness. Creating the personal environment for it all to come together is a luxury beyond financial means; it is a luxury of thought and intention, of knowing what to value first. If you want to have a quality of life where being healthy and fit means taking advantage of the full potential of your body, then make it a priority to have a space at home where you can exercise and practice mindfulness. A yoga mat in a corner and a few weights or resistance bands is all you need to get started; adding a sauna is icing on the cake.
Recent client’s priorities of fitness, health, and family led them to me. I built a roomy sauna in their home gym, which is one to die for. But what mattered most was not the nice setup or expensive equipment, it was that they had made being healthy together a priority—and that is something we can all afford. Even though I would love to have their gym setup when I am cranking it out, sweating buckets on my old bike-on-a-trainer next to the water heater in our basement, I am just as happy and alive as I would be in their gym (and my wood-fired sauna out back rocks!). As we age, there is no going back to reset the clock; we must simply keep moving and use the body we have. Movement and exercise can be done with little or no equipment, and having a Sauna is a nice reward and perfect compliment. Your body will thank you!
