The Finnish Art of Sauna Diplomacy

A key part of a foreign-policy reporter’s job is to attend networking events to hobnob with diplomats and policymakers and get a pulse on behind-the-scenes Washington. Which is how I found myself in the dimly lit basement of the Finnish Embassy, holding a canned gin drink, and save for a small hand towel, entirely naked.

Welcome to the—pun very much intended—hottest ticket in town on the Beltway insider party circuit: the Finnish Diplomatic Sauna Society.

For the better part of 15 years, the Finnish Embassy here has leveraged the steamiest side of Scandinavian soft power to convene all of the city’s policy movers and shakers—the Pentagon officials, the congressional aides, the diplomats, the think tankers, and, when they’re really desperate, even the occasional Foreign Policy reporter—for an evening of policy shop talk and chit-chatting. All at around 180 degrees Fahrenheit in a special-purpose, steam-filled, wood-paneled room at the embassy.

Foreign embassies in Washington hold glitzy and glamorous gatherings all the time—to commemorate national holidays, toast incoming dignitaries, and help build up the embassies’ connections and networks in the sprawl of national security. But the Diplomatic Sauna Society stands apart from the rest and has taken on a cult following around the Beltway since it came into its current form in 2008, making it something of a soft-power coup for the Scandinavian embassy.

“When I mentioned I was coming, all my coworkers were asking how they could get an invite,” said a congressional aide who went.

“Honestly, the weirdest and coolest thing I’ve done for work,” said a former Pentagon official who has two tours of the Diplomatic Sauna Society under his belt and is hoping to be deployed for a third.

It may even be a point of envy for the other embassies in town. “When I talk to the Norwegians and ask where their sauna is, they get a little prickly about it,” said another congressional aide who’s been.

Joining the Diplomatic Sauna Society inducts you into a long-standing and storied Finnish tradition of mixing the high-heat therapeutic practice with diplomacy. It’s a tradition that helped Finland steer clear of falling under the Soviet orbit during the Cold War, a tradition that may have helped usher in Namibia’s independence, and a tradition that prompted George H.W. Bush to jump completely naked into the Baltic Sea during a pivotal trip to Europe. (More on that in a bit.)

The evening begins in the main hall of the ultramodern embassy, adorned with sleek wood paneling and an industrial design, where all the newly invited sauna society members exchange pleasantries over drinks.

From there, the party moves to the embassy’s basement, boasting an equally modern and stylish bar with a giant neon “Sauna” sign behind it for some more drinks. Then, the men and women split up to partake in the evening’s main event in separate batches. The sauna-ing begins.

The whole evening has a relaxed atmosphere, something of a rarity in the buttoned-up world of Washington’s diplomatic scene. Swimsuits or towels are optional, whatever people are most comfortable with. Most opt for the Finnish way, i.e., none of the above.

The elixir of choice is the Long Drink, an iconic Finnish gin mixed drink that’s basically a Tom Collins in a can, but way better, because it’s being sipped in a sauna with newfound sauna friends. The chatter drifts between the work, the personal, and the inevitable “Wait, why doesn’t everyone have saunas? This is great” line of conversation.

Whenever the steam dissipates too much, a ladle of water is poured onto a pile of smoldering stones in the corner to revive the heat. The conversations ebb and flow with the steam.

For the non-Finns, the sauna is a special and unique experience. For Finns, it’s equally special, though not unique at all. “The sauna, it’s very integrated into our Finnish culture, so for us, it’s very normal,” said Pasi Rajala, the press counselor at the Finnish Embassy and host of the Diplomatic Sauna Society events. “I’m personally surprised by how excited Americans are by this. Here in the U.S., there’s a lot of interest and curiosity for it.”

If saunas are a ubiquitous part of Finnish culture at home, they also represent a potent tool of diplomacy abroad. Each and every one of Finland’s embassies and consulates abroad come equipped with a sauna, and Finnish diplomats have arranged their own Diplomatic Sauna Society circuits in Berlin, Brussels, London, and Tokyo, Rajala said.

The Finnish military has always followed suit, too. Name a conflict where Finland deployed its forces for peacekeeping missions, and chances are there was a sauna in tow, irrespective of the climate.

In the 1950s, Finnish peacekeepers deployed to the Sinai Peninsula jury-rigged a sauna on an abandoned Egyptian military transport platform using telephone poles that the Israelis left behind. Finnish peacekeepers built saunas for their mission in the Golan Heights as part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s and made sure that the Israeli and Syrian ambassadors had access to them as they wished. Finnish troops involved in the NATO mission in Kosovo in the 2000s built more than 20 saunas on their base.

The sauna has also been used to great effect in high-wire diplomatic negotiations. Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president, helped lay the groundwork for Namibia’s independence in the 1970s and 1980s during his time as a top U.N. envoy by cultivating ties with Namibian freedom fighters invited to his sauna. (Ahtisaari would later earn a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve conflicts in Namibia, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Iraq.)

Urho Kekkonen, Finland’s longest-serving president, was said to have sweated his Soviet counterparts into submission in his sauna, keeping Finland’s fraught balance of neutrality during the Cold War in place. It was in the sauna that Kekkonen reportedly broached the idea to his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, of Finland joining the European Free Trade Association, a forerunner to its European Union membership, thereby cementing its Western orientation with the unlikely blessing of the Soviets. (Vyacheslav Molotov, a top henchman for former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, sharply criticized Khrushchev for getting naked with a foreigner—and non-communist, to boot—Finnish government archives unearthed in 2001 revealed. Khrushchev had him sacked.)

Then there was that time when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush reportedly jumped nude into the Baltic Sea after a sauna excursion with his hosts during a 1983 visit to Helsinki. It was during that trip that Bush opened a new channel of communication with the Finns, and the Finns, highly versed in Soviet affairs, informed Bush that he and President Ronald Reagan may want to invest in getting to know a rising star in the Soviet Union named Mikhail Gorbachev.

Let’s just boil it all down to the power of the sauna.

The world of diplomacy is full of stodgy pomp and circumstance, buttoned-up exchanges, and stilted communiques. But talking points and stuffy formality don’t hold up well when you’re sweating, drinking, and sitting naked in a hot, dark room with your opposite number, and maybe that’s what makes the sauna sizzle in the world of diplomacy.

Pertti Torstila, a senior Finnish diplomat at the time, summed it up nicely in his 2010 speech to the 15th annual International Sauna Congress in Tokyo. (Yes, that’s a real thing.)

“In sauna all are equals,” Torstila said. “There are no superpowers or minipowers in a sauna, no superiors or servants. You don’t keep your politics up your sleeve when you are not wearing sleeves. If you discuss and agree on something when you are all naked, it’s difficult afterwards not to keep your word. … Networking in the nude is an absolutely moral good.”

As the nude networking event wound down on this particular evening back in Washington, Rajala reconvened the whole group (now fully clothed) to induct new members into the society. Each new participant received an official “Sauna Diploma” certificate that awards full membership into the Diplomatic Sauna Society “with all of the rights and privileges thereto” and lauds them for their sisu (grit) for networking in the (mostly) nude. The diploma has a reminder on it about the evening’s discussions staying off the record: “What is said in sauna stays in sauna.”

Soon, senior defense officials at NATO could be receiving their own version of the diploma. Finland on Tuesday made history when it formally joined NATO as the 31st member of the military alliance. And, true to form, NATO headquarters just installed its own sauna.