Löyly and the soul of a sauna

In January, I took an eerily empty flight to Helsinki. “Virus fears,” the cabin crew member whispered to us, gesturing to the abandoned rows. I laughed.

We checked into our hotel past 1AM but I didn’t sleep well. I binged on the burgeoning fears on the coronavirus Reddit page, allowing everyone’s worries to rationalise mine.

Thankfully, Finland is home to the world’s biggest coffee lovers. They consume more coffee per capita than anywhere else — and their brews are excellent.

Anticipated snow turned out to be heavy sleet, but we plodded around the very walkable capital all day, pausing in design shops to dry a little. As the sun started to set in the early afternoon, we made our way along the waterfront to a highly-Instagrammed mixed-sex sauna. The Baltic wind whipped our faces and burned our noses red. ⠀

“Imagine jumping into that,” I said to my boyfriend as we were caught by flecks of frozen sea foam. He laughed, probably because he knew he would force me to join him in the water within the hour. ⠀

There are five million people and three million saunas in Finland. Löyly is often found on lists of ‘untranslatable words’, language steeped in unique culture. It refers to the surge of steam after water is thrown on a sauna’s heater — and also the sauna’s soul.

We went to a sauna named after this intangible element. It was full of locals. Locals used to saunas so hot it felt like my eyes might slip out of their sockets.

When Jack suggested we head outside I was glad to be somewhere I could breathe, sleet or no sleet. The Baltic sea was a cold green against the angry sky and the chill was relentless. I watched Jack plunge into the water while I hugged myself, frozen.

But the next time, when the löyly felt like it was rising into my skull, I joined Jack and darted out of the building and into the furious winter sea. And sprinted back inside numb, proud and ready to tell the world (or Instagram) about my “bravery”.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this experience now we’re in lockdown. Of the envelope of heat having a force of its own.

There’s something in the life-giving, life-having properties of bathing. Morning rituals of a fresh, startled (acne-popped) face cleanse. Wind-down soothing showers. Crazy Daisies as a child, exciting and endlessly entertaining.

But I don’t think anything has ever left me so vividly aware of every part of me, internal and external, as that sauna. Choked lungs, steam-shrunken eyes, wind-whipped and goosebumped legs. And the feeling of being totally alive.

If you’re Finnish, you might read this and laugh. Total sauna novice. You’re right.

I’d love to go back and feel the soul of a sauna again. As well as the chatter and thrum of everyone else experiencing the heat and the cold and the whoosh of the water on the hot stones, just before the löyly drops.