Finland

Christmas in Oulu

Christmas in Oulu

My second winter as a student in Oulu, I spent the entire Christmas break with my adopted friendship family, the Hannus family. When they picked me up from my student apartment complex near the university, I was ready to go. It had mostly cleared out for the break time with students scattering around the world, until studies resumed again in January.

What is kekri and how did I not know about this before?

What is kekri and how did I not know about this before?

I ran across kekri once again as I looked for a theme for this week’s Keskustelutunti (Finnish Conversation Hour). I had first encountered kekri when visiting museums in Finland and reading a few books, but had never really looked into it further than the passing mention. What I discovered was something I think I have been longing to know about for a long time.

Peace, Love, Löyly

Peace, Love, Löyly

I have enjoyed being a part of the growing interest in sauna here in the US, in particular Minnesota since returning from studying at the University of Tampere in January 2012. I somehow took it on as my personal mission to operate as a volunteer Ambassador of Finnish culture and that includes sauna, of course. My first sauna experience was in a community sauna at Salolampi Finnish Language Village in Bemidji, MN. To say that that experience was transformative is lacking the true intensity of the life-altering moment I first experienced löyly (that is steam produced in the sauna - and only the sauna - otherwise it is höyry for the non-sauna steam that gets produced in other contexts like cooking or powering of old-timey trains).