Finnish IRL

Finland's UNESCO file contradicts the sauna guides

In 2020 Finland described its sauna culture in a file submitted to UNESCO. The fifteen pages disagree with the English etiquette guides on nearly every shared point.

The unwritten rules Published Updated 8 min read

Quick answer

  • Finland described its own sauna culture in a nomination file to UNESCO in 2020, and the element was inscribed that December. It is the closest thing to an official rulebook that exists.
  • On the two questions English guides answer most confidently, the file declines to. Bathers are commonly nude, especially at home, but may also be covered. And the forms of sauna - electric, wood-heated, smoke, infrared - carry no hierarchy among them.
  • The temperature it gives is a range, not a number: 65 to 105 degrees. Nothing in it says what any single sauna must be.
  • The rules that are genuinely enforced are not etiquette at all. They are the booking list in an apartment building and the fire rules around the stove, and both are written down somewhere you can read.

What you'll learn

  • What Finland told UNESCO the sauna is, in its own words
  • The two questions the official description deliberately leaves open
  • Where the rules that actually get enforced are written
  • Which guidebook claims survive contact with the file and which do not

There is a document in which Finland explains the sauna to the United Nations.

It runs to fifteen pages, it was submitted in 2020, and in December of that year the committee inscribed Sauna culture in Finland on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.12 It is the nearest thing to an official statement of what the practice is, written by the people who do it, for an audience that had to be told everything from scratch.

It contradicts the English etiquette guides on nearly every point where the two of them overlap.

The wood stove and stone stack of the smoke sauna at Kuusijärvi in Vantaa
The file describes this object in one clause and spends the rest of its length on what happens around itPhoto: Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) / Wikimedia Commons

What Finland actually said

Six things from the file, quoted or closely paraphrased, each of which a guidebook states more confidently than the country does.3

  1. 1
    The temperature is a range
    "The air temperature while sauna bathing is typically 65 to 105 °C." Forty degrees of official latitude, against the single number most guides give.
  2. 2
    Clothed or not is left open
    "Bathers are commonly nude, especially at home, but may also be covered." That is the whole ruling, and it settles the argument by declining to have it.
  3. 3
    No form of sauna outranks another
    "Saunas come in many forms - electric, wood-heated, smoke and infra-red. Approaches vary too, with no hierarchy among them." The smoke sauna is not the real one. [It is one of four](/finnish-sauna), and which one you are in decides the rest.
  4. 4
    Gender division is a description, not a rule
    Bathing turns are "commonly based on the traditional gender division in public saunas and on social occasions". In families, parents and children bathe together until the children reach puberty, and after that with same-gender family members.
  5. 5
    It starts in infancy
    "Most people have their first sauna experience as babies." Which is why nobody in the room is performing a ritual: they have been doing this since before they could walk.
  6. 6
    The point is the löyly
    "At the heart of every sauna in Finland lies löyly, the spirit or steam released by casting water onto a stack of heated stones." The dictionary carries both senses in one entry, which is why the file could not choose between them either.

The line the whole file turns on is shorter than any of those: “In the sauna people remove their social status with their clothing.” A nomination to a UN committee is an odd place to find the actual rule, and that is the actual rule.

The wood-lined interior of the sauna at Tamminiemi, benches and a small window
A sauna between turns. The file notes that the city ones nearly disappeared after the 1950s and have been coming backPhoto: Ypsilon / Wikimedia Commons

One number in it is worth a footnote of its own. “There are about 3.3 million saunas in Finland”, says the nomination, in what it calls a country of 5.5 million people, and it adds that all of them “have access to it, simultaneously should they wish”. Nobody has ever counted the saunas, and that figure is now inside a UNESCO inscription.

The rules that get enforced

Here is the part the etiquette genre misses completely. The rules a Finn will actually hold you to are not about towels, and they are all written down.

Where it is writtenWhat it saysWhat happens if you ignore it
Where it is writtenThe booking list in your buildingWhat it saysYour slot is a fixed hour on a named dayWhat happens if you ignore itSomebody is standing outside at the hour
Where it is writtenThe house rulesWhat it saysQuiet hours, and who may come to a general turnWhat happens if you ignore itA note, then the housing manager
Where it is writtenFire-safety advice about the stoveWhat it saysNothing dried, stored or hung above itWhat happens if you ignore itSauna stoves are a standing item in Finnish home fire-safety advice
Where it is writtenThe washroomWhat it saysShower before you go in, and sit on a paper matWhat happens if you ignore itThe two things people genuinely notice, and neither gets said out loud
Where it is writtenThe room itselfWhat it saysAsk before throwing water - voiko heittää?What happens if you ignore itThe person on the top bench is hotter than you are

The building sauna is the one that catches newcomers, because it is an actual administrative object with a list and a key. Saunavuoro is the word, and the slot is the thing: an hour, on a named day, that you are paying for either way.

The fire rules are the other genuinely serious item. Domestic fire-safety guidance in Finland treats the sauna stove as one of the recurring causes of house fires, which is why nobody hangs anything above one and why a wood-heated stove in a building you do not know is not something to experiment with.4

Steam rising in a sauna while a bather uses a birch whisk
Löyly and a birch whisk - vihta in the west, vasta in the east - which is the pairing the file spends most of its description onPhoto: Ville Kurki / Wikimedia Commons

The guide claims, against the file

What the guides sayWhat Finland told UNESCO
Never wear a swimsuitCommonly nude, but may also be covered
Sit in silenceNot mentioned. The file describes it as a place to socialise
Smoke sauna is the authentic oneFour forms, no hierarchy among them
Eighty degrees is correct65 to 105
Always take the top benchNot mentioned anywhere
Men and women never mixCommonly separate in public; families bathe together

Five of those six are inventions, and the sixth is a description reported as a law.

The national inventory entry behind the nomination, written by dozens of Finnish sauna associations, adds the one scheduling fact worth knowing: the traditional sauna day is Saturday, though people now bathe on any day.5 The Finnish Sauna Society, an association founded in 1937, was part of the UNESCO project itself.6

What the file does emphasise, and no guide does, is the social function. It calls sauna bathing “an important tool for people with an immigrant background to help them integrate in the country”, and describes the feeling in the room as one of “equality and respect among bathers”. A newcomer being invited is not being tested. They are being included, in the one room where the country has agreed that nobody outranks anybody.

A bather being whisked with leafy birch twigs in a sauna
Whisking, which the nomination lists among the specialist crafts around the practicePhoto: Ville Kurki / Wikimedia Commons

What is left to get right

Not much, which is the finding.

Shower before you go in and sit on a paper mat. Ask before you throw water - voiko heittää? is the whole sentence. Leave the stove to whoever heated it. Take your slot and leave when it ends. Everything else that the internet has told you is a rule turns out, on the evidence of the country’s own submission to a UN committee, to be a preference somebody had.

The other half of this is the talking, which has a shape and an order to it, and that is set out separately.

Footnotes

  1. Sauna culture in Finland - UNESCO. Inscribed in 2020 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, decision 15.COM 8.b.27 ↩

  2. Nomination file no. 01596 - submitted by Finland, fifteen pages. Source of the temperature range, the clothing sentence, the absence of hierarchy among sauna forms, the description of bathing turns and the 3.3 million figure ↩

  3. Kielitoimiston sanakirja: löyly - Institute for the Languages of Finland ↩

  4. Kotien paloturvallisuus - SPEK, the Finnish National Rescue Association, on home fire safety ↩

  5. Saunominen - the Finnish Heritage Agency’s living heritage inventory, the national listing the UNESCO nomination was built on ↩

  6. Suomen Saunaseura - the Finnish Sauna Society ↩

sauna - a man in a towel sitting with a beer outside a small wood-fired Finnish sauna, steam off his shoulders and deep snow all round
sauna More saunas than cars, and one rule everyone actually enforces
löyly - a man on a sauna bench tipping a ladle of water onto the hot stones while the younger man beside him braces
löyly The word meant soul for four thousand years before it meant steam
saunavuoro - a woman writing her name on the sauna booking list pinned to a noticeboard in a bare Finnish apartment-block corridor
saunavuoro Your building has a sauna, and a list, and you are not on it
mökki - a man standing on the steps of a small red Finnish summer cottage with a coffee cup, a lake glinting through the birches
mökki Half a million of them, and the rules are all unwritten

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Questions people ask

Do Finns wear swimsuits in the sauna?

At home, usually not, and not in a gender-separated public sauna either, where a swimsuit is the odd choice and is sometimes banned on hygiene grounds. In the mixed commercial saunas swimwear is required. The official description allows for both, and nobody will comment on either.

Are men and women separate?

In public saunas and at organised events, usually yes, and the file describes bathing turns as commonly following that division. Families mix, and among friends it depends entirely on the group.

How hot should it be?

Between 65 and 105 degrees is the range Finland gave UNESCO. Within that it is a matter of who is in the room, which is why the person holding the ladle asks first.

Is a smoke sauna the real one?

Not officially. The file lists electric, wood-heated, smoke and infrared and says approaches vary with no hierarchy among them, which is the opposite of what most English guides imply.

Can I talk in the sauna?

Yes. The silence rule is the most repeated invention in the genre, and the sequence of what actually gets said is a separate subject.

What about children?

The file says children and parents commonly bathe together until the children reach puberty, and after that with same-gender family members. Most Finns first went as babies.

Is there anything I can get badly wrong?

Two things, and neither is etiquette: throwing water without asking the room, and putting anything on or above a hot stove.

Do I need to book?

In an apartment building, yes. The shared sauna runs on a booking list and you pay for the slot whether or not you use it. Missing it costs you nothing; running over it is the part people notice, because the next person is already at the door.