“It will make you feel so good!” Katja Pantzar hears her friend scream for encouragement as she stands on a wooden dock in central Helsinki on a cold, dark and snowy winter night.
It’s -10 degrees, but all Pantzar is wearing is a bathing suit, a wool hat, and borrowed neoprene gloves and boots. She has been promised that she is about to take a step towards healing all her problems, from aches and pains to feeling down.
Pantzar is about to dive – a dive into water that is warmer than air, but still around 3°C and covered in ice. While this might seem like a daring feat or a crazy gamble to many around the world, ice swimming or swimming in winter is not an out-of-the-ordinary sight, even in the center of the Finnish capital.
Instead, jumping into a hole cut through sea ice or into a lake during winter is an everyday activity in Finland – undertaken with gusto.
A writer and journalist from Helsinki, Pantzar believes this unlikely national pastime is one of the reasons Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world.
In his book “The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Well-Being and Happiness through the Power of Sisu”, Pantzar credits swimming in the sea almost every day in Finland, year-round, to his happiness and general well-being.
Although born in Finland, Pantzar was raised and educated in Canada. While “cold” wasn’t exactly a strange concept, she never considered herself a cold-water person before living in Finland as an adult.
“When I moved to Finland, I noticed that people seemed to have fun doing things that required a certain amount of courage, like riding a bike in -20°C. I also noticed their love of ice swimming,” says Pantzar.
taking a dip
After meeting a group of women eager to swim on ice at a dinner party, Pantzar was convinced to give it a try. It didn’t hurt, she recalls, to know that ice swimming would cure all of her ailments, from depression and fatigue to headaches.
That first night, she dove into the nearly frozen Baltic Sea. Pantzat reached up to her neck, but it was painful – “like being pricked with pins,” she recalls. She thought her first ice-swimming experience would be her last.
“Then this weird thing starts happening: you get all tingly and you feel hot and you start to feel good.”
After warming up in the sauna, Pantzar decided he wanted to jump into the icy water again, even though the first experience was terribly cold, difficult, and unpleasant. It was those first emotional moments of feeling so alive after the cold dive that not only made her understand why Finns do it, but also what made her become such an ice swimming fanatic.
“To my surprise, I became completely addicted to it,” says Pantzar. “From there, needless to say, it became an addiction. And now I can swim through a little loop for 30 seconds or a minute.” Thirty seconds to a minute is an average dive time, while some hard-core swimmers stay in the water for more than a minute.
Passionate about the practice of cold water, she began to seek the euphoric after-effects of the first time they flooded her post-dive – a moment she describes as feeling simply “invincible”. But her journalistic curiosity beckoned her to delve deeper to find out why she and her Finnish friends felt so energized and exuberant after a dip in the icy water.
A bath of ‘happiness’ and ‘love’ hormones
Why do Finns feel so energized and exuberant after a dip in ice-cold water?
Pantzar reached out to experts to find out, including Professor Hannu Rintamäki from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and the University of Oulu. Rintamäki has dedicated his 40-year career to studying the effects of the Arctic climate on the human body from an occupational and wellness perspective.
The “feel-good” effects that Pantzar experienced after his immersion in the ice water were a result of the body releasing so-called “happy hormones”, endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.
She found that swimming made the body produce more serotonin, a mood-balancing hormone, along with dopamine, the neurotransmitter that helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers, and oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone.” .
Pantzar found scientific evidence that it wasn’t just the thrill of bragging that made ice swimmers feel so euphoric.
Still, she found that the benefits of these icy dips don’t stop with the increased release of feel-good hormones. Pantzar explained a number of side effects to swimming in cold water, including improved blood circulation, a boosted immune system and an increase in calories burned.
Another bonus: many ice-swimming devotees follow their swim with a sweat in the sauna, which not only helps relax the mind and body, but also flushes out toxins. Increased circulation and improved cardiovascular health are two other sauna benefits, and Finns really enjoy their sauna time.
Swimming through Finland’s cold, dark winters
There are around 150,000 active winter swimmers in Finland, and there’s even a group of ice swimming enthusiasts who dive twice a day.
Hannu Markkanen started cold water swimming as a child, growing up in Finland, but it wasn’t until adulthood, when he joined a cold water swimming club in Helsinki, that the activity became part of his daily routine. Currently, Markkanen takes a dip in the sea twice a day, on her way to work and then in the evening, where she follows up the swim with a visit to the sauna.
“For me, swimming on ice makes winters much more pleasant. Especially here in southern Finland, where winters have become dark and muddy because of climate change,” says Markkanen, who shared that he no longer suffers from seasonal depression since his full embrace of ice swimming.
He likens the energy derived from the summer sun to immersion in cold water, which he says has helped him deal with work-related stress more effectively.
Depending on your personality or mood, Markkanen suggests that ice swimming can be a peaceful, meditative exercise or a social experience where people from different backgrounds, professions and cultures come together.
Building a community is made even easier for the simple fact that in the water and sauna you can’t be on the phone. Markkanen believes that as young people seek authentic, digital-free experiences, they are, in turn, embracing the ancient Finnish tradition.
For winter swimming instructor Päivi Pälvimäki, diving in Finland’s natural icy waters is more enjoyable and healing than swimming indoors. Like Markkanen, Pälvimäki says it helps make winter more bearable. After an ice-cold swim, Pälvimäki feels refreshed and happy. She has more energy and sleeps better too.
This explains why the former college art teacher has made swimming her full-time career.
Co-founder of Finland’s first open water swimming association in 2015, Pälvimäki calls the activity a simple mindfulness practice.
“Your survival mechanisms kick in in cold water, as you need to be there to neutralize them with peace of mind,” she says, adding, “And it helps balance a stressful life by putting you in close contact with nature.”
“Sisu” and the art of not taking the easy way out
As Pantzar delved more into ice swimming, the concept of “sisu” continually emerged. “Sisu is the 500-year-old Finnish national concept that roughly translates to courage, courage or perseverance, or if you prefer, being tough,” explains Pantzar.
Pantzar began to see more and more examples of this fortress that the Finns embodied. The pleasure derived from doing seemingly uncomfortable things, like jumping into frozen lakes and seas, may be linked to this idea of “sisu”.
The most historic example of Finnish sisu is the country’s repulsion of the Soviet Union’s military during the Winter War in 1939. Although the Soviets had three times as many soldiers and 30 times as many planes and 100 times as many tanks when they invaded Finland, the finnish army managed to outsmart the soviet army in brutal winter temperatures and darkness.
Another iconic example of “sisu” that Pantzar shared with me is the story of Finnish Olympic runner Lasse Viren’s unbelievable comeback after crashing during the 10,000 meter sprint at the 1972 Munich Olympics. the gold medal and set a new world record.
Practicing daily acts of “sisu”
It’s not just Finnish soldiers and Olympic athletes who embody this national drive. It can be seen in everyday life in Finland in daily acts of “sisu”. Growing up in “North America’s culture of convenience,” Pantzar says that as an outsider, she saw in the Finns a mindset of turning challenges into opportunities.
“Don’t take the easy way out” is an everyday attitude in Finland, according to Pantzar. Like many Finns, she cycles year-round in winter, enjoys looking for fruit rather than just buying it at the supermarket, and encourages her child to play outside, regardless of freezing temperatures.
“It takes a bit of sisu on a snowy morning to go for a run – or even a cold dip in the sea – rather than the easy way out by getting into a taxi,” Pantzar believes. “But you will feel better for accepting and winning the challenge.”
Visitors to Finland during winter can try ice swimming.
Pantzar recommends Helsinki’s Allas Sea Pool, a complex of floating outdoor pools in the city’s central harbor. Open to the public, it has lifeguards on hand, heated pools and saunas to warm up after a cold swim.
Finland: a country of contentment
“If you came here in the middle of winter and hop on the tram, you might wonder where this ‘happiest country in the world’ comes from, as Nordics aren’t the most smiley or talkative,” Pantzar shares.
The secret of Finnish happiness is summed up in the Finnish saying which, translated, means: “Happiness does not come from looking for it, but from living.”
Because they keep themselves so busy – whether it’s ice swimming, cycling or reading (Finland is one of the most literate countries in the world) – Finns simply don’t have time to look for happiness.
Instead, Finns are content with these daily exercises of thought, movement and determination, some bolder, extreme and blissfully cool than others.
Source: CNN Brasil
