Will the UK warm to Finland’s naked sauna diplomacy?
The Finnish embassy in London allows diplomats to relax while they wrestle with international issues. …
There have been times when Finnish leaders used the sauna for more direct diplomacy. In the 1960s, Finland’s Cold War leader – Urho Kekkonen – took the then President of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev into an all-night sauna and persuaded him to allow Finland to integrate with the West. In 2005, when Vladimir Putin visited Helsinki, he had a sauna with the husband of the Finnish president, Tarja Halonen, and described it as “a wonderful experience”.
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