Sauna evening

"This illustration depicts the modern style of northern sauna. This style is distinguishable by its seating arrangement, the location of the stove, the seats themselves and the size of the sauna room.

In the traditional style, the seating is near the floor, usually no more than bricks, rocks or wooden stools. In the modern style, the seats are elevated and the room itself is quite tall, while in comparison the traditional sauna has a more flat and wide form structure. The seats are slanted slightly, so the sauna goers are leaning forwards to a support rail, a gap is left between the seat and the wall to allow room for tails to hang comfortably. Lying down is usually only possible in larger variations of this sauna.

Unlike the traditional style of sauna, firewood can be applied during the sauna and there is a stove with a pipe that will lead out the smoke out of the sauna. The traditional style has no stove, nor pipe. Instead a fire is lit for several hours to heat up a large quantity of rocks, a far larger quantity that can be fit inside the modern style stove. Afterwards the smoke is aired out of the room. These traditional style saunas tend to be quite large, fitting more than 10 people."