Sauna Day 2023
The National Sauna Day 2023 set another record, with 93 registered and 91 attending. The National Sauna Day was celebrated for the 26th time.
As usual, a very fine event arranged by those present and above all the staff at Kukkolaforsen. Live music with a sauna theme, grilled makkara sausage, cold lager, chaga tea and various other treats. And, of course, twelve different saunas on top of that. Members of the Sauna Academy met to socialise and bathe. In honour of the day the Village Sauna was reopened, having suffered a fire at the end of the previous year. Thankfully firefighters arrived in time and the sauna has now been renovated. "On the outside you can't tell, and now you can hardly see anything on the inside either. But we have kept a little as a memento," says Mathias Spolander, who runs Kukkolaforsen Tourism & Conference together with his sister Johanna Spolander and brother-in-law Martin Spolander. There was also a greenhouse sauna – a greenhouse the family has transformed so that people can sit in the warmth and generate heat and energy while resting their gaze on the border river passing right alongside.
In honour of the day the Sauna Music Trio entertained with songs – all with some kind of sauna connection. Einar Granström, who lives in the village, left his work binding bath whisks for a moment to take a spontaneous turn around the floor with his wife Rut Granström. "We danced folk dances forty years ago, but it's sort of in the marrow. What we danced was a so-called kukkolarimpaa, a local variant of the mazurka," says Einar Granström. A little way off Janne and Päivi Carlsson come walking, both in beautiful dressing gowns. They live in Tyresö outside Stockholm but have travelled all the way to the Torne Valley to celebrate the National Sauna Day. "When I moved to Sweden in 1996 he built a sauna in the flat where we lived. The sauna is important, it is the best thing there is. We found the Sauna Academy through Facebook and now we are members. We think it is a wonderful event and we have been so warmly welcomed," says Päivi Carlsson. Mathias Spolander stood by the grill serving those who needed nourishment to keep up with all the bathing. "You go in. Then you recover. Only to go back in again. A bit like a hockey match played in three periods," he says.
