Norway & Rune Sauna
A Friendship beyond borders
The Journey Begins
In November 2019 Jakob and Lorenz travelled to Oslo to meet Rune (right on the picture), one of the sauna builders of Oslobadstuforening. This association built the first floating sauna in Oslo in 2016. Three years later they already had two floating saunas and yet another one in the making. Until today Oslobadstuforening became one of the most popular associations in Oslo and runs more than 10 saunas at different places around the city. Rune introduced us into the art of building floating saunas and to the sauna culture of Oslo. Rune and the whole weekend convinced us to start our project in Kiel.
Waterkant Festival Kiel 2022 -
A Visit from Oslo
After two years of planning, building our Saunabus and preparing the Crowdfunding Campagne to finance Kiel's first floating sauna, we invited the CEO of Oslobadstuforening Ragna (speaking in front of the Bus), Rune and Juni (lawyer of the association, right of the left picture) to come to the Innovation and Start-Up Festival Waterkant in Kiel. It was such an honor to have our friends form Oslo over in Kiel to support our project. At the end Ragna invited us to a Saunafestival in Norway. What?
A Saunafestival? Yes, that's also how we reacted and we didn't want to miss this chance.
The Saunatour through Norway
Badstufest 2022
A Saunafestival in the Mountains of Norway
“The sauna is about being with yourself. And sweating,” explains Knut, the festival organizer. He pours fresh coffee into four cups from a French press pot, with the foggy valley of Valdres behind him. “A panoramic window would take away this moment, you would be distracted by the view.”
That’s right, the view of the lake in the valley and the snow-covered mountain peaks behind is breathtaking. Nevertheless, at first glance it is not entirely understandable why he only had a 15 by 30 centimeter window built in a sauna at an altitude of 1,500 meters. “The Idea came from the architecture students from Trondheim; the concept of a meditative sauna session was particularly important to them.”
The Cabin and the Sauna
You can only get to Knut’s hut via hiking trails, on foot or by quad bike. There was originally just a barn up here, where his family has been keeping cows for over 100 years. The idea for the sauna came to him after his military service with the mine defusers in Afghanistan.
The barn became a state-of-the-art mountain cabin made of glass, wood and stone. The building fits almost organically into the rock on which it stands. It seems as if the architecture has adapted to nature, and not the other way around.
Less than 50 meters away, a mountain stream breaks through a rocky gorge. The students let off steam just above the waterfall: the narrow sauna tower rises above a narrow wooden bridge. It is open, you can only climb up a wooden ladder, the stream rushes beneath you.
Whats the purpose of this festival?
Knut wanted to connect sauna enthusiasts from all over the world to this beautiful place where they can come together and experience over three days 10 different saunas around this area, eat and learn in workshops about sauna culture and techniques.
Høst | With a Saunabus through Norway
So...here we are! After the invitation of Ragna (CEO of Oslobadstuforening) to come to the Badstufest in October 2022 we wanted to make the most out of it and we decided to record the whole trip on camera.
I mean who of you guys already travelled with a saunabus through Norway in October? Yep, that's what I thought. We not only wanted to come for the Badstufest but also to surf, meet interesting people and learn about Norwegian Ocean Protection Projects.
The plan was to invite everybody on our trip to join us for a sauna session and that we'll meet all these interesting people. So we had basically four months to organize a Film Crew, get some sponsoring and make this dream come true.
Fortunately we found the Film Crew from different minds that was crazy enough to join us for one month in the rainy "Høst" (Engl.: Autumn) of Norway. Philipp Sigmund (Filmer) and Finn Springborn (Professional Surfer and Filmer) are very experienced in Surf Movies and Outdoor Stuff so it was the best crew for our story.
Thanks to the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Ocean Summit, The City of Kiel and Oslobadstuforening we could handle the costs of our Trip. We tried to travel on a low budget, so mostly we slept in our sauna car and at places we were invited to. We are really thankful for the hospitality of the Norwegian people we met in our sauna.
"Høst | With a Saunabus through Norway" is a proof of love to Norway and we were able to show it on the Cinemare Ocean Filmfestival 2022 in Kiel, at the Saunaopening at Krutverket in Oslo, at the Waterkant Festival 2023 and at the Badstufest 2023. The movie is now online on Youtube!
Watch and enjoy below!
Some Analogous Moments from
the Badstufest 2023
The Badstufest 2023 was again hosted by Knut, they guy in front of his 800 year old cabin up in the picture. With almost 140 attendees it was as big as never before and people from Ireland, England ,Canada, Germany and of course Norway shared the love for sauna, good local food and this amazing nature for three days.
