Sauna diplomacy is not just a quirk of D.C.’s Finnish embassy. Urho Kekkonen, a Cold War-era president of Finland, was reputed to have used the sauna to soften up the Soviets. Legend has it that when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev came to Finland for Kekkonen’s 60th birthday, the two stayed in the sauna until 5 o’clock in the morning. As Finland’s then-Secretary of State Pertti Torstila recounted the tale at the 15th International Sauna Congress in 2010: “At the end of the visit a communiqué was issued in which the Soviet government expressed its preparedness to support Finland’s desire to integrate and cooperate with the West.”
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