The first visit to a sauna (bastu in Swedish) can be quite a culture shock for new arrivals to Sweden, so to make it a bit easier, we’ve asked Svante Spolander, co-founder of Sweden’s Bastuakademien sauna club, to explain the rules.
The first visit to a sauna (bastu in Swedish) can be quite a culture shock for new arrivals to Sweden, so to make it a bit easier, we’ve asked Svante Spolander, co-founder of Sweden’s Bastuakademien sauna club, to explain the rules.
The first visit to a sauna (bastu in Swedish) can be quite a culture shock for new arrivals to Sweden, so to make it a bit easier, we’ve asked Svante Spolander, co-founder of Sweden’s Bastuakademien sauna club, to explain the rules.
It’s a toss-up whether it’s more challenging as a new arrival to get naked in a small, hot steamy room with a group of absolute strangers, or with people you actually know – say your mother in law, or colleagues from your department at work.
According to Spolander, the rules of sauna etiquette can differ depending on how well you know the other people.
Do you have to wash beforehand?
You might think this is a no-brainer – that you should of course shower before stripping off and sitting naked in close proximity to others.
But according to Spolander, washing before a sauna reduces the amount of heat you can tolerate, meaning real enthusiasts like him normally tend not to.
“If you shower, you are so clean that you can’t take so much heat,” he says. “There are always some pieces on your skin that protect you a little when you go to the sauna for the first time.”
The general rule is that you probably should shower before entering a public sauna, say in a swimming pool or at a kallbadhus (cold bath house) on the coast. But you might not before taking a sauna in someone’s home, or a small wooden one on a lake.
“At home, I never do,” Spolander says.
Most outdoor saunas will have a footbath outside to wash any dirt off your feet before entering. You should use this to help keep the sauna clean.
A woman enjoys a sauna with her dog in Dalarna. Photo: Hilla Aspman/imagebank.sweden.se
Do you have to be naked?
Traditionally you would be, but it’s not obligatory. “Sauna is individual. If you have a towel or your swimsuit or if you are naked, it’s up to you,” Spolander says. “Younger people in Sweden are really shy – I think it’s this thing with mobile phones and filming. They are, like, scared of it, but we say that it’s up to you.”
In a public sauna in a swimming pool, some people in Sweden now wear swimsuits. It’s also normal to bring a large towel to cover yourself up with as you come back from a cooling dip in a lake or a shower. Even purists will bring a small towel to sit on.
Where do you sit?
Saunas normally have two, or occasionally three, levels of benches. This allows people to regulate their heat, as the lower benches are cooler. When you come into a sauna, people will normally move to make room for you (and you should also try to make room for those who come after you). You typically sit upright, sometimes hugging your knees, sometimes with feet down. You should only lie down or lounge if there’s enough space.
At public saunas, like this sauna in Gothenburg, it is common to bring a large towel. Photo: Credits: Anna Hållams/imagebank.sweden.se
Is touching OK?
Perhaps surprisingly, yes. Saunas can get very crowded, with 20 or more people squeezed into a space the size of a bathroom, so it can be impossible to avoid some physical contact with the person on the bench next to you. For Spolander, the way this forces you to drop your physical boundaries is part of the appeal.
“Sometimes it’s quite funny when there are a lot of people. It’s like in a football game, it’s little crowded, but you have fun together. In the sauna museum that I look after, we have what we call a village sauna, and you can be 60 people when we pack it.”
It might also be OK to wipe some of the sweat off a loved one, or even scrub them. “My father, when he got older, had a friend that when they went in the sauna, they always helped each other to wash each other’s backs. They scrubbed each other.”
But anything romantic is a no no.
“No, never. Not that,” Spolander says. “That the weird thing. Somehow people that are not used to sauna think that nakedness means sex. Nakedness is the sauna is about total cleaning.”
According to Svante Spolander from the Swedish Bastuakademien, foreigners wrongly see saunas as potentially erotic. Photo: Julius Aspman/imagebank.sweden.se
What do you talk about?
For Spolander, a sauna is a social event, a place where everyone is on the same level and you can have honest, open conversation.
“We have in in the saying in the Sauna Academy, ‘in sauna, veritas’ – in sauna is the truth. You are quite equal in the sauna. You don’t have any medals. You can’t see who is who is doctor and who is not.”
In Finland, the sauna diplomacy of President Urho Kekkonen, who took Russian leaders, KGB presidents and generals into the sauna with him, is credited with keeping Finland on the right side of the iron curtain during the Cold War.
But how do you handle the social aspects as a foreigner, or a stranger? Spolander recommends greeting the other people in the sauna, identifying a free place to sit, and asking if it’s OK for you to sit there before taking your seat.
Once in there, you might introduce yourself, say where you are from and perhaps ask a few questions.
Generally the talk in a sauna is quite calm. People keep their voices low. You might chuckle gently, but you wouldn’t hoot with laughter. The conversation might range from local gossip and history to national and international politics, but tends to avoid anything controversial.
“You find positive things to talk about, because sauna is not a discussion club, it’s supposed to be relaxing and a place to enjoy yourself, so so I think the conversation must be in the same vein. I’m always interested in other people and where they come from.”
Spolander says this is something that he has drummed into his children and grandchildren. “I teach them that sauna is not a playground. We don’t scream and run around. Sauna is a place where we listen to each other, we talk about things and and learn how to enjoy the steam.”
If you are a stranger and the rest of the people all know eachother, you can keep quiet. There’s no requirement to talk.
How hot and steamy do you get?
In Bara bada bastu, Sweden’s 2025 Eurovision entry, the singers joke about cranking up their sauna to 100C, literal boiling point, an approach Spolander dismisses as for amateurs.
“If you only take talk about degrees, you don’t know so much about sauna, because sauna is a combination of humidity and temperature. The humidity is carrying the heat,” he says.
A sauna at 60C and 60 percent humidity is, he says, harder to handle than one at 90C or even 100C with only 20 percent humidity. A sauna at 70C and 65 percent humidity would be most people’s limit.
Having a sauna, Spolander argues is “not a competition”, even though he concedes that he was put to the test when growing up.
“When I was a young boy and had to go with the men to the sauna, I was really scared,” he laughs. There was always the same ‘sauna master’, he remembers, no matter which of the local farmers was hosting the sauna evening. “He always wanted to test the younger boys. ‘Let’s see if the boy comes out now with the men and so on. So it was a kind of graduation.”
In today’s more gentle sauna culture, though, it is polite to look around the room and ask if everyone is OK with you pouring some more water onto the coals and sending a wave of hot steam through the room.
What should you drink?
Many people take a bottle of water to help them stay hydrated, but people will often also drink a light beer, particularly in Finland.
“There is a YouTube clip where there a really big tattooed Finnish guy – like, you don’t want to meet him in the dark – and he sits in the sauna and says ‘Swedish guys, they they sit and drink Fanta and and read ladies papers in the sauna,” Spolander laughs.
You wouldn’t drink anything stronger though, and having a sauna while drunk is dangerous.
You can also pour beer onto the coals, but you would only do this with friends or family who have agreed to bath in an aroma of hops and yeast.
“Sometimes when I’m with my grandchildren, I ask, ‘shall we bake some bread?’ Because you get the exact same aroma from when you bake bread,” Spolander says. “We can do this at home and in private sauna, but not in the public sauna, because some people don’t like it.”
How hard should you push yourself?
It’s up to individual preference, but if you want to get the maximum health benefits, Spolander recommends pushing yourself.
“I recommend that people challenge themselves and find the level where they feel that now, now it’s too hot,” he says. “It’s like sports training. You train yourself to get better at taking the steam.”
One of the academy’s members is a doctor who has researched the health benefits of saunas at the Karolinska Institutet medical university.
“They find that the moment that you press yourself, you challenge your level, is very healthy because it triggers all the immune defenses in your body. The endorphins start kicking in. The feeling afterwards is great. You feel like you achieved something.”
Discover more from World Byte News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
