# Outside Finland, people scroll their phones in the sauna. Finland has a rule for that.

- Series: [Saunantakaa](https://miu.fm/saunantakaa.md)
- Published: 2026-10-14
- Page: https://miu.fm/saunantakaa/outside-finland-people-scroll-their-phones-in-the-sauna

## Story

Outside Finland, people scroll their phones in the sauna. Finland has a rule for that.

It is read out loud every June: no mobile phones.

For a Finn, a phone in the sauna is like a drum kit in a library. And the Finnish rule sounds eight hundred years old. It is called the sauna peace, saunarauha, and the peace was real. Sweden's oldest law book, written down in the 1220s, lists killing a man in the bathhouse among the deeds no fine could ever pay for. Finland was part of the Swedish realm, and its later laws kept the peace of the bathhouse.

So every June, for Finnish Sauna Day, someone stands at the door of a public sauna and reads it out: "Let no one come to the sauna with sword drawn, but stripped bare, smiling gladly, hand held out. Quarrels, disputes and mobile phones shall be left further than earshot from the sauna."

Mobile phones, in a medieval law? The words were written in the 1990s by Eero Välikangas, the founder of the International Smoke Sauna Club. The Finnish Sauna Society says a medieval original has never been found. And by the end of 1998, Finland had more mobile phones than landlines, the first country in the world. The nation of the mobile phone gave it one law: not in here.

The phone agrees. Its makers say to use it between 0 and 35 degrees Celsius. A Finnish sauna is around 80.

Does your sauna have the rule? Phone in, or phone out?

Sources: Äldre Västgötalagen (the Elder Westrogothic Law), the deeds no fine can pay for, in Natanael Beckman's translation (1924); Institute for Language and Folklore, isof.se (2025); Heikki K. Lyytinen, "Saunarauhan historia", Saunologia (2023); Finnish Sauna Society, sauna.fi (12.6.2020): the proclamation and its author; RCR Wireless News, "Mobile overtakes fixed in Finland" (1.1.1999); Apple Support, operating temperatures.
Sounds: Freesound (CC0): Froey_, logancircle2, Nickh69, supaluci, HowardV, xkeril, TRP, haulaway, mad-monkey, spookymodem, Aiyumi, wwstudioswastaken, mcmikai, I.fekry, brunoboselli; Mökkiperikunnalle sounds (CC0).

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