The sun shimmers across the water outside the sauna – it looks inviting, though it’s clearly going to be freezing. But it’s only a quick dip, and then the bikini-clad bathers will be back in the enveloping warmth of the caramel-scented wooden cabin a few metres away on the shore, its giant picture windows giving exquisite views on to the distant hillsides.
This is Scandinavian winter living par excellence: but it’s not a Norwegian fjord or Swedish forest – it’s the banks of Loch Fyne on the west coast of Scotland. This is one of a growing number of Scandi-style outdoor saunas across the coastline where locals and visitors gather through the long, dark northern winter days in search of company and warmth, and to boost their physical and mental health.
“They do winter so well in Scandinavia – they find ways to really enjoy it – and now we’re doing the same in Scotland,” says Hailey O’Hara, a member of the family that runs West Coast Wellness, owners of this sauna.
“Before, there was really only the pub where people could gather in winter, and that’s great, but a sauna offers a different kind of vibe.”
And, says her sister-in-law Rosie Barge, as with all the best Scandinavian winter traditions, this one is positively built for bad weather. “It’s beautiful today, but in some ways it’s almost better when it’s stormy – you get such a buzz. And the atmosphere in the sauna is really sociable. There’s no pressure: you can chat or just look out at the scenery.”
The sauna here was a spinoff from lockdown, when the extended Barge family returned to their farm in Otter Ferry and realised how much they loved their dips in the loch. “We bought two trailers from a farm in Aberdeen and turned them into a sauna for up to 16 people,” says Rosie.
There are regular community sessions, and it’s the same across the country on the shores of the Moray Firth at Watershed Sauna, where Elle Adams and Rupert Hutchinson transformed an old horse box using a Finnish wood stove. “We love swimming here, but it’s so cold and dark during winter. We thought: ‘Wouldn’t a sauna be great?’ When we opened it here on the beach in November 2022, everyone wanted to try it out, and it’s now really popular and a thriving little business. It means the beach is fun in all weathers, and it’s a brilliant way of connecting people to the natural world.”
Adams and Hutchinson spent time in Norway and have seen the way winter is celebrated there. Scotland’s connections with the Nordic countries across the North Sea, with whom it shares so much in terms of geography, climate and culture, is increasingly being marked in other ways.
Coorie, the Scottish equivalent of the Danish hygge, embraces the sense that winter isn’t something to survive or endure – it’s a time to change gear, focus inward and recharge. Glasgow interior designer Anna Campbell-Jones, a judge on the BBC’s Scotland’s Home of the Year, says the coorie culture has become more pronounced in recent years, as have elements of Scandinavian design. “People are building their own homes in beautiful rural locations, creating large spaces with big windows so there’s a direct connection with the outdoors.” She’s also noticed a big increase in outdoor tubs for year-round use: “People are installing them so they can run out into the cold or the snow and enjoy the natural surroundings.”
Another Scandinavian tradition that’s becoming more popular in Scotland is hutting – owning or renting a hut, often in a remote area of the countryside, to which you retreat at weekends to sample a simpler way of life. Campbell-Jones has one on an island in the Hebrides. “You can only get there by boat, and once you’re there you’ve only got what you brought with you: there’s no electricity, running water or mobile phone signal,” she says. “So you reconnect with nature and also with the people around you, and you make your own fun.”
It’s a kickback, she says, against the idea that entertainment has to come from the newest streaming must-see drama, or that we have to define ourselves by what’s happening on social media or to other people. “We’ve forgotten how to just ‘be’ with one another, and this is about resetting that.”
Culturally, Scandi-Scot connections are being celebrated more than ever: a conference in November called Partners in Crime, organised by the Scottish Society for Northern Studies explored literary cross-currents between Scotland and Scandinavia via crime fiction, and this year’s fortnight-long Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow, which opens on 18 January, has a Norwegian tie-in. Its creative producer, Donald Shaw, says he’s often struck by the likenesses.
“When folk musicians talk about inspiration they often talk about landscape and climate. With Nordic and Scottish folk music, you find a lot that’s similar. The fiddle tradition is strong in both areas, and there’s a community feel to it – people come together, especially on dark winter nights, and they play music together.”
