arrived in Finland in mid-August. She decided to retire here after a couple of visits last year.

In the late summer of 2009 I settled in Finland. I chose this country for my retirement after only a couple of earlier visits. ‘Why’, you might be wondering (as no doubt would I in your place). Well you’ll have to continue wondering about what – perhaps even tragic – trauma might have led me to uproot and flee alone to a Finnish forest. The mystery of it should keep you all reading (I believe it is known as a ‘hook’ in the trade). It is an accepted fact that everyone loves a spot of detective work...

Of course, I feel a great empathy for the Finns because I, too, like to be left in peace. I also love beetroot, porridge and cold, rough weather. Being of Scottish origin, I sip a small whisky now and then. ‘Mainly medicinal’, I tell myself. ‘Traditional’, too, I tell myself –being a Scot. A “hot toddy” (Scotch whisky with hot water and honey) was the remedy for most ills when I was a child, so I suppose I teethed on the stuff. And when the going gets tough there is nothing like it for getting a small, serene smile back in place and sharpening the sense of humour. But I digress. ‘What has whisky to do with Finland,’ you ask. I am now asking myself the same question, so we’ll move on to the sauna.

I took my first sauna in Järvenpää in 2008, at around midnight on a summer’s day (I wrote ‘day’ on purpose, actually). It changed my life. It immediately became the one thing missing in my hitherto perfect world, (apart from the mysterious reason for leaving Belgium) and I asked myself how had I lived until now without this magnificent tradition. I went back to Belgium only to find that normal bathrooms had lost all their appeal. Jaded, I still took showers (you have to, don’t you) but the memory of that sauna and its buckets and scoops held me captive. It became an obsession. I had to have a sauna of my own. Always there, smelling of tar. Incidentally, since my initiation, I use only tar-smelling shampoo and I sometimes sniff a bottle of terva sauna oil when feeling a bit down, especially if it’s too early for a whisky.

Now I have two of them (saunas, not whiskies) and the pleasure remains undiminished. Here I am, installed in a forest, no longer working (all that having been replaced by the stress of language classes) and I think life is perfect. Finns are just as I first perceived them: rather like the Scots in fact; at least, as I remember them, having been away so long. I am now looking forward to being able to converse with them very soon – not too often, though, that goes without saying – about important everyday stuff like berries, mushrooms, ants (but we’ll go into that another day)... and saunas.

Vivien Bryce - HT