HELSINKI, Finland — When Elizabeth Rehn took over last year as Finland’s first woman defense minister, she banned conducting national security debates in the ministry’s sex-segregated sauna. “I ...

As the cab slows to a stop, I scrape some of Jack Frost’s handiwork from the window and peer into the depths of the polar night. We’re only 15 minutes from the center of Helsinki, yet dense forest ...

A woman in Finland wanted to convert an abandoned boathouse into a sauna for 12 years, but she couldn’t get municipal approval – so Denizen Works traveled from London to her home in Åland and came up ...

Saunas, for the most part and for legions of adults, enjoy a warm reputation as being good for you. And a recent study of Finnish men and women seems to add more credence to sauna's health benefits, ...

What if I Told You About Finland’s Sauna Obsession? Welcome to Finland, a country utterly obsessed with saunas. The sauna is the most important social forum in Finland. There are more saunas than cars ...

BATTLE GROUND — When Markku Kesala sees a sauna, all he can think is that it’s time to play the music and light the lights. “Growing up in Finland, my family would sauna together every Friday,” Kesala ...

Finland is a country of extreme contrasts—summers of dizzying, full-time light, followed by depressingly long, dark winters. The sauna regulates it all, offering the benefits of winter in summer and ...

To a Soviet soldier of World War II, a “cuckoo” was a Finnish sniper attached to the German Army. The Finns, who fought back heroically when the Soviet Union invaded Finland in the months before ...