Apples soaked in wine and the rules of public saunas

For a long time, the public sauna was a regular part of city life. People went there to wash, not for the experience. Not all homes had a bathroom or hot water, so saunas served as the city’s communal washing facilities, where daily life unfolded in step with the steam, the bucket, and the towel. In Helsinki, there were reportedly over a hundred public saunas by the mid-1940s.

Public saunas had their own rules. There were many customers, the facilities were shared, and order had to be maintained. The staff made sure that people behaved properly in the sauna, and alcohol was frowned upon. If a bottle of liquor was found, it was confiscated.

However, the rules didn’t stop people from coming up with their own solutions. One story about the old public saunas tells of apples that were pierced with holes and soaked in wine before a trip to the sauna. On the surface, the only thing brought along was a snack. In practice, the fruit had absorbed what the bottle was not allowed to bring inside.

The detail almost feels like a sketch, but it fits perfectly into the world of public saunas. They combined discipline with familiarity, the everyday routine of washing with the small-scale drama of the changing rooms. Steam rose, buckets clattered, and somewhere under a bench or at the bottom of a bag lay an apple, prepared with greater care than usual for the evening in the sauna.