--- title: "Every Finnish embassy has a sauna, and nobody has to ask" description: "Finnish missions are reported to come with a sauna, Washington runs a monthly society in three of them, and Finnish has a verb for putting somebody else through one." type: "article" category: "finland-explained" url: "https://finnishirl.com/blog/sauna-diplomacy" canonical: "https://finnishirl.com/blog/sauna-diplomacy" published: "2026-10-21" updated: "2026-10-21" author: "Andrey the Nomad" site: "Finnish IRL" license: "https://finnishirl.com/terms#ip" --- # Every Finnish embassy has a sauna, and nobody has to ask URL: https://finnishirl.com/blog/sauna-diplomacy Date: 2026-10-21 Updated: 2026-10-21 Category: finland-explained Keywords: sauna diplomacy, finnish embassy sauna, kekkonen khrushchev sauna, diplomatic sauna society, saunottaa meaning, finland soft power Summary: Finnish missions are reported to come with a sauna, Washington runs a monthly society in three of them, and Finnish has a verb for putting somebody else through one. Quick answer: - Finnish diplomatic missions come with saunas. Reporting on the practice describes every embassy, consulate and official residence as having one, and the staff who run them describe the room as a working instrument. - President Urho Kekkonen raised Finland's EFTA question with Nikita Khrushchev in a sauna. Molotov is reported to have criticised Khrushchev afterwards for getting naked with a foreigner, and a non-communist at that. - The embassy in Washington keeps three saunas in the basement and has run a Diplomatic Sauna Society in its current form since 2008, drawing up to 25 journalists, think-tankers and congressional staffers a month. - Finnish has a dedicated verb for the act: saunoa is to take a sauna, and saunottaa is to put somebody else through one. English has no single word for either. What you'll learn: - The two Finnish verbs this practice runs on, and the difference between them - What Kekkonen actually did with the sauna, and what it is said to have cost Khrushchev - How the Washington society works and who turns up to it - The one rule inside that makes the room useful to a diplomat Body: Urho Kekkonen put Nikita Khrushchev in a sauna and raised the question of Finland joining the European Free Trade Association while they were in it. Vyacheslav Molotov is reported to have given Khrushchev a hard time about it afterwards, on the grounds that he had got naked with a foreigner, and a non-communist at that.[^fp] The story is told without a firm date attached, which is worth knowing before repeating it. The story is told in Finland as a joke and filed abroad as an anecdote. It is neither. It is the clearest surviving description of a method the foreign ministry still uses, and the method has a Finnish verb attached to it that English cannot translate in one word. ## Saunoa and saunottaa Saunoa is to take a sauna. It is an ordinary intransitive verb and English has to rent a noun to say it: to have a sauna, to take a sauna, to go to the sauna. Saunottaa is the causative, and its home ground is looking after somebody: its ordinary objects are children, elderly relatives and guests. It means to put somebody else through a sauna, and it is built with the commonest of Finnish's causative suffixes, -tta-. | Finnish {fi} | What it does | | --- | --- | | saunoa | to take a sauna, yourself | | saunottaa | to sauna somebody else | | saunottaja | the person doing it to you | | syödä / syöttää | to eat / to feed somebody | | juosta / juoksuttaa | to run / to make somebody run | Finnish builds causatives this way for anything, not just for saunas. **A diplomat hosting a sauna is not taking one, grammatically. They are doing it to a guest**, and the language has a noun for that role. ## The room comes with the building Reporting on the practice describes every Finnish embassy, consulate and official residence as being fitted with a sauna.[^vice] It is not a request a particular ambassador makes. The room is part of what a Finnish mission is, in the same way a flag and a reception room are. Sanna Kangasharju, a press counsellor in Washington, put the purpose plainly: "I often say that the sauna societies are our best diplomatic weapon."[^vice] Her colleague Pasi Rajala gave the other half, the one Finns recognise: "The sauna, it's very integrated into our Finnish culture, so for us, it's very normal. I'm personally surprised by how excited Americans are by this."[^fp]
What the room removes

Nobody can tell rank in a sauna. No suit, no seating plan, no phone and no note-taker, and the embassy's own staff describe the result as off the record rather than secret.

## Washington, three saunas in the basement The embassy in Washington keeps three of them downstairs and runs the Diplomatic Sauna Society, in its current form since 2008.[^fp] Up to 25 journalists, think-tank researchers and congressional staffers come to a session, monthly, on both sides of American politics.[^vice] A Finnish block of flats runs its shared sauna on a saunavuoro, a booked hour on a fixed weekday. An embassy sauna is the same object with a different door policy: the hour is held and the list is drawn up by a press counsellor.
  1. 1
    It is invitation-based and oversubscribed
    Demand for places has been reported as well beyond what the three rooms hold. Being hard to get into is itself the result the format is aiming at.
  2. 2
    Nothing is agreed in the room
    The output is familiarity. Nothing gets written down, and people who have shared a bench do not open a later phone call from scratch.
  3. 3
    The arguing rule is real
    The convention Finns describe is that you do not argue in a sauna and everyone leaves on good terms. It is the constraint that makes the room usable for people who disagree professionally.
## It is now an academic subject Bradley Reynolds, at the University of Helsinki, published a study of the practice in *Cooperation and Conflict* in 2025, arguing that Finland has used the sauna to change how the sauna itself is read internationally, and that this amounts to a challenge to conventional diplomatic culture.[^reynolds] Reynolds's point is that the sauna was not a prestigious object abroad to begin with. Finland installed its most domestic room in every mission and moved it from exotic to desirable over several decades. The word travelled with it and almost none of the vocabulary around it did. Finns say asia hoitui saunassa about construction contracts and union negotiations, not only about embassies. It is also a sentence that describes 1987 better than it describes 2026: the corporate sauna now does client hospitality and team-building far more than it decides anything. What has not changed is that nobody involved finds the room unusual. ## The word went and the vocabulary stayed Sauna is the Finnish word with the widest international reach. It is in English, German, Japanese, Russian and most other languages a Finnish mission operates in, and it got there without a campaign. What did not travel is the verbs. English borrowed the noun and stopped, so there is no English word for taking a sauna and none at all for giving somebody one. | Finnish {fi} | What English did with it | | --- | --- | | sauna | Borrowed whole, pronounced differently | | saunoa | Not borrowed. English rents a verb: to have, to take | | saunottaa | Not borrowed. No English construction for it | Löyly and kiuas did not travel either, and [the sauna hub](/finnish-sauna) carries that vocabulary in full. The pronunciation is the part Finns notice. English says the first vowel as in "saw", Finnish says it as two vowels run together, and the version a Finnish diplomat hears at a reception in Washington is not the word they brought. English took the room and left both verbs behind, so a Washington invitation list is doing by hand what the word never carried: teaching people what you do in there. ## Where the etiquette comes in A guest at one of these is in a normal Finnish sauna with normal Finnish expectations, and nothing about the setting relaxes them. The rules that are actually enforced are in [the sauna etiquette post](/blog/finnish-sauna-etiquette), and what people actually say on the bench is in [the phrases one](/blog/what-to-say-in-a-finnish-sauna). The one addition is the arguing rule, and it is literal. A guest who uses the heat to press a point gets a bench full of people waiting for him to stop. [^fp]: [The Finnish art of sauna diplomacy](https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/04/finland-diplomatic-sauna-society-soft-power/) - Foreign Policy, 4 April 2023 [^vice]: [Saunas are Finland's best diplomatic weapon](https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-finlands-diplomatic-saunas/) - Vice [^reynolds]: [From Orient to Occident: sauna diplomacy and Finland's challenge to diplomatic culture](https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/from-orient-to-occident-sauna-diplomacy-and-finlands-challenge-to) - Bradley Reynolds, Cooperation and Conflict, 2025 FAQ: Q: Do people really negotiate naked? A: In the Finnish setting a sauna is taken without clothes, and sessions are usually single-sex or private for that reason. Nothing is signed in there; what happens is conversation. Q: Is a sauna in an embassy a security problem? A: It is a room with no phones, no notes and no recording. That is the appeal, and why the conversation is called off the record and not secret. Q: Can a visitor get into the Washington one? A: It operates on invitation through the embassy rather than as a public booking, and reporting on it describes demand well exceeding the places available. Q: What is the difference between saunoa and saunottaa? A: Saunoa is what you do yourself. Saunottaa is what you do to somebody else, and it is the same causative pattern Finnish uses for feeding a child or walking a dog. Q: Do other countries do this? A: Several have copied the format and the Finnish missions encourage it. That is what soft power is for. The distinctive part is that Finland installs the room before anybody asks. Q: Is this only a Cold War story? A: No. The Washington society in its current form dates from 2008 and the academic literature on it is from the 2020s. The practice is current. Q: Does the foreign ministry pay for them? A: They are part of the fit-out of the premises, the same budget line as any other room a mission entertains in. No published figure separates them out. Q: What do you actually say in there? A: Less than you expect, and nothing that needs answering immediately. The sequence of what gets said is on the sauna phrases post. Sources: - The Finnish art of sauna diplomacy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/04/finland-diplomatic-sauna-society-soft-power/ - Saunas are Finland's best diplomatic weapon: https://www.vice.com/en/article/inside-finlands-diplomatic-saunas/ - From Orient to Occident: sauna diplomacy and Finland's challenge to diplomatic culture: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/publications/from-orient-to-occident-sauna-diplomacy-and-finlands-challenge-to - Finnish embassy's sauna flooded with requests: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/finnish-embassys-sauna-flooded-with-requests - Sauna diplomacy and the quiet power of informality: https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/sauna-diplomacy-and-the-quiet-power-of-informality/ - Sauna diplomacy across the Atlantic: https://finlandiafoundation.org/2025/02/25/session-4-sauna-diplomacy-across-the-atlantic/ - Kielitoimiston sanakirja: saunottaa: https://www.kielitoimistonsanakirja.fi/#/saunottaa Related words: sauna, loyly, saunavuoro