Sauna

This picture is Sigurd Olson’s cabin located near Ely, Minnesota. I was attending a Listening Point writing workshop with Doug Woods as the instructor. The writing assignment was  “Go write about something that captures your interest and if possible, tie the story into your personal or family life.” I hurried out the door and headed down the narrow trail to the sauna. There seemed no other choice for me. 

            I wasn’t always a Finlander. My Grandmother, Ida, came to America from Esse, Finland in 1902, but she claimed to be Swedish. She spoke Swedish even though she was raised on a farm that was established in the 1500’s in the center of Finland. Grandma Ida became angry if anyone dared call her a Finn. So my father’s generation grew up as Swedes and we grandkids feasted on lefsa and krumkaka, recipes perhaps stolen from the Norwegians, and we suffered the Christmas lutfisk.

            We are Finns! As a retired guy with time on my hands and with the long reach of the internet, I was eventually able to establish our family origins. My American cousins were pretty skeptical of these findings. My wife said it was funny how I was the only Finlander in my family but I was finally vindicated – back in the “old country” I discovered over 200 relatives! To make a long story short, eight of these Finnish cousins visited northern Minnesota last summer and, yes, we actually all pretty much look alike.

            With my Finnish credentials firmly established, I argue that Sigurd Olson was also Finnish. Sig was born a Swede. His Father, a Baptist minister, delivered sermons in Swedish. Like my Grandmother Ida denying her Finnish heritage, did Sig stray from his Swedish roots?  He chose the Finnish architecture for his cabin and sauna. On his canoe trips, he prepared a fish stew, a staple in the Finnish diet. In his writing, he mentions the Finnish word for bravery and fortitude – Sisu. There was something about the Finnish culture that Sig innately admired.

            Sure, it is possible that Sigurd chose to transplant the two buildings to Listening Point because the silver-gray color of the weathered logs blends so well into the surrounding landscape. But examine the dovetail corners of the sauna. Finnish builders are famous for those precise cuts. Sigurd must have admired the craftsmanship that plain-living country people could accomplish with natural material – the joining of two perfections: Finnish woodworking skills and nature’s finest effort, a tree.  

            When one talks to the real practitioners of sauna it is evident that this is more than a bath or a “good sweat.” Something mystical happens in a sauna. It is a time when an individual has a chance to look back at a memory, clarify a thought, or experience a vision. This can be a time of quiet, time ordinarily not found in daily life. Sigurd spent a good share of his adult life seeking those special moments. He called them “flashes of insight”.

            In his book, Runes of the North, Sigurd describes the sauna experience.  I had the privilege of sitting on the shore of Listening Point near that old weathered building and imagine the details of his colorful sauna story: chop the wood, build a fire, heat the rocks, pour the water, enjoy the steam, share a laugh, sprint to the lake, immerse in the cold water, do the birch-branch whipping thing, and repeat as needed. 

            As final proof of Sig’s “Finnishness,” he begins and ends the Runes book with passages from Finland’s epic poem, the Kalevala. My favorite line, “Birds twittered words, and the boughs of trees whispered charms.” These things happen at Listening Point in every season. For those who listen to the wind as it sweeps across the rocks or quietly rests in the branches above, some days a single word can be heard, a word that pays tribute to Sigurd’s vision of man’s place in the natural world: Sisu.