← Back to context

Comment by csr86

8 hours ago

In Finland we have old saying: "If liquor, tar and sauna won’t help, an illness is fatal"

Is it true that new houses are constructed/architectured as "sauna first" and then everything else is planned around the sauna?

or is that just an urban legend claim?

  • Not around the sauna per se, but sauna is often built first because it serves as a place to live while you're building the house!

    • Yes, that it was especially rural environments and not having much options otherwise to live around while building.

      Sauna that was built then wasn't just one hot room, but it also had at minimum small changing room dressing/undressing, relaxing between turns in steam room. Also if it was first building made then adding also lounge which served as living space with beds and cooking stove while building house was common. With sauna you had place to stay warm first winter, able to get warm water, wash clothes, yourselves and even a give birth old times. Building sauna first made lot of sense.

      These days sauna for home builders is more about getting sauna somewhere in that floorplan where works well for the intended users of that house.

    • >sauna is often built first because it serves as a place to live while you're building the house

      wouldn't a kitchen accomplish that goal better?

      3 replies →

  • I have no idea if that claim is true, but what I did love about visiting Finland was the even the small apartment I rented had a sauna in it! It seems like it's a non-negotiable for even the smallest accommodations.

  • While it's true something like 90% of the accomodation have a sauna it's not like everything is planned around it. It's more like that it's the ONLY well soundproofed space, with nice atmosphere, that makes life enjoyable when your neighbors suck.

Tar?

  • "Tar, acclaimed to have been formed from the sweat of Väinämöinen, a central character from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, was an important medicament to the former-day Finns. Tar actually did bear antiseptic features, which worked as a cure for infections. Lately tar has been recognised to include parts that can cause cancer, and the European Union has urged that its use should be avoided." [1]

    I personally dont know how tar was used for health, but it was big export item of Finland during medieval times.

    [1]https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/themes/themes/health-a-wellbein...

    • Vishnevski’s Liniment, which contains birch tar, was a common treatment for wound infections and burns in the Soviet bloc. However, this was something that individuals used because there was nothing else at hand.

      Now, there are things like Fucidin, Polysporin and silver ointment for infected wounds and burns, respectively, that are safer and more effective.

      Some people still swear by it, because “tradition” and probably some element of malignant patriotism too.

  • Not the tapes, tar pit tar, the black thingy used in boats. And now that I read what's the translation it seems to be asphalt actually.