Sauna diplomacy

“Anger cools in the sauna. Resentment fades away.”

~ from The Sauna Is by Bernhard Hillila

The truth of that couplet might have been the reason why Finland’s Urho Kekkonen (Prime Minister from 1950 to 1956 and President from 1956 to 1982) called the sauna a “great leveler,” which blurred the lines between VIPs and laborers, ministers and lumberjacks. For years, it was the ministers’ custom to gather at the prime ministers’s residence for a one-and-a half-hour weekly sauna, following their official business and formal deliberations. Kekkonen is said to have “left his guests to steam until a deal had been hammered out” (Torstila 2010). 

(Photo: From left, Soviet president Kliment Voroshilov, Communist Party chairman Nikita Khrushchev, and Finnish president Urho Kekkonen in 1960.) 

 

Kekkonen even held one-on-one sessions in the sauna with Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet leaders of the nation which had been Finland’s great enemy. 

The Economist magazine recognized the sauna as “the secret weapon of Finn diplomacy and business life.”

The tradition is called “sauna diplomacy,” with important decisions and agreements being made in the saunas. The secret is simple — heat thaws people’s differences. 

 

Nikki