With each London summer comes a new trend. Last year the city was consumed with a lurid green Brat fever—courtesy of Charli XCX’s seminal album and its calls to party. This year we seem to be taking life at a gentler pace. The latest gen Z (and millennial) obsession is with saunas.
My Instagram algorithm has been desperately trying to sell me “sober sauna raves”, sauna boats and “sauna social clubs”, where you can drink kombucha and enjoy an ambient DJ set alongside (no doubt) some of southeast London’s most insufferable residents.
Well, Londoners, what if I told you that I have free, year-round access to the hottest sauna in town, where the only people I rub sweaty shoulders with are my friends? How have I unlocked such privileges? Yes, that’s right: my friends bought a sauna. It’s about as exclusive as it gets.
For context, my best friend, Joe, recently spent a year doing national service in the Finnish army. He didn’t want to relinquish his desirable, Brexit-friendly EU passport, so off to Finland he went.
Six months into his time out there, we flew out to Helsinki to see him. None of us had ever been to Finland (or Scandinavia at all), and we were struck by three things: the very long summer days, the quiet politeness of the Finns and the ubiquity of saunas—which we’d always considered a luxury item in the UK.
Even our Airbnb had a sauna. We made good use of this perk, spending much of our holiday opening our hearts (and our pores) to the practice of sitting in a dark, wooden, hot room. Diligently, Joe did his health and safety announcement: don’t touch the coals; don’t vape in the sauna; don’t pour beer on the coals. We took some of it on board. Now, he’s the mastermind behind what we’ve dubbed Project Sauna.
Admittedly, the sauna my friends have purchased doesn’t exactly resemble the log cabins of our Scandinavian summer holiday. For starters, it’s not made from wood. From the outside it resembles a glorified gazebo: a thick sheet of purple plastic with makeshift translucent windows and a silver chimney, all supported by some basic metal framing.
But don’t let appearances (or my damning description) fool you. Once you’re inside and it’s zipped up, with a couple of logs burning, this so-called tent really does feel like a sauna. That is to say, it gets HOT in there. Within minutes after the first löyly (Finnish for the steam that rises from the first water that gets thrown onto the coals), we can barely open our eyes for all the sweat—my nose ring even starts to burn my nostril; I’d add “remove all jewellery” to Joe’s health and safety instructions.
From the outside our sauna resembles a glorified gazebo
And, to keep things true to Finnish tradition, my housemates have gone to the trouble of getting an inflatable cold pool. So when temperatures get too high, there’s an easy out.
In an effort to extend our socialising beyond the beer garden this summer, we’ve decided to meet on an almost weekly basis for a sauna session. Honestly, it has become such a wonderful ritual for the five of us to spend time together without getting blackout drunk—refreshing, even.
The ceremony goes as follows. Joe loads the sauna with wood while the rest of us chat; we dart barefoot across the lawn and into the tent; then we spend between 10 and 20 minutes steaming ourselves into oblivion, scuttling back and forth across the grass for icy dunks. When satisfied, we retire to the living room, whack some YouTube on and take it in turns to shower. Bliss.
It’s equal parts soporific and energising. And I struggle to think of better ways to spend a summer evening than sweating out my troubles among my nearest and dearest.
