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In seven months flat, travel writing has turned me into a Nordic spa snob. I started the year with a visit to Destination Kohler in January 2024 before heading up to Canada to take a delightful dip at Strøm Nordic Spa in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Now, no vacation feels complete without the steam of a smoky sauna session and the goosebump-inducing euphoria of a 60-degree pool plunge. But it wasn’t always this way.
Growing up, “playing spa” meant squeezing artificially dyed green goo from a drugstore bottle onto my face, covering my eyelids with cucumber slices and calling the whole procedure a “mud mask.” Massages, as far as I knew it, were for fancy people. Manicures were experiments my cousins and I conducted on one another’s fingernails.
Nordic spa traditions, however, focus less on beauty procedures and more on health rituals. That’s why I love them. I don’t think I could travel as much for work as I do without soaking up the between-flight benefits of a trip to the sauna.
Strøm Spa (Adrien Williams)
Long thought to provide health benefits, Nordic spa treatments usually involve “contrast bathing,” or alternating hot and cold water treatments. This practice is also sometimes known as “hydrotherapy.”
Hydrotherapy includes hot, warm and cold plunge pools combined with rotations between a dry sauna and/or steam room. You might also encounter the occasional hydrotherapy spin-off procedure, such as the Destination Kohler’s Fire and Ice treatment, which involves lying under a multi-head “Vichy” shower while an esthetician exfoliates your skin with mitts and glides peppermint-infused ice spheres along your arms, legs and torso.
Generally speaking, contrasting hot and cold water treatments is said to soothe sore muscles, support the immune system, reduce inflammation and release endorphins, explains Simmone Lyons, director of operations at Alyeska Nordic Spa at Alyeska Resort. Cradled by Anchorage’s scenic Chugach mountain range, Alyeska’s recently renovated wellness center is the first Nordic spa in the state of Alaska, where guests can restore after a long day of hiking or skiing.
Lyons says Nordic spa culture developed in places that have always had both naturally occurring cold and thermal waters, whether at sea level or in higher alpine settings. “For thousands of years, Nordic people have harnessed the power of alternative hot and cold water treatments inspired by the region’s natural contrasts,” she explains.
Southern Alaska, therefore, makes for an obvious natural spa setting, thanks to the beauty of its Pacific temperate rain forests and sub-zero temperatures. Lyons says Alyeska is surrounded by spruce and hemlock trees, and guests can bathe outside in a variety of saunas and barrel hot tubs.
My first taste of true Nordic hydrotherapy was, happily, in the Nordic region at Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, a geothermal pool and spa resort about 30 miles from Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík. The Lagoon resulted from the accidental concentration of discharge water from the nearby Svartsengi geothermal plant. Though it is not a naturally occurring geothermal spa as some mistakenly claim, the Blue Lagoon’s milky blue waters, rich in minerals, provided the perfect tranquility to break up my 27-hour layover back in 2018 when I flew through on my way to a summer writing residency in Dublin. The steam rising from the saltwater pool beckoned to me. I waded in, bought an exorbitantly expensive mud mask and later lounged in the resort’s cozy, oversized robes. Not a bad introduction to spas, eh? (Are you starting to understand why I’ve become a snob?)
In recent years, more Nordic spas have cropped up throughout the U.S. and North America, a pattern that Lyons attributes to a “steadily growing” interest in wellness, natural therapies and self-care. Of course, as a millennial, nothing makes me more proud than self-care trends sweeping the nation. But the history of Nordic Spas goes deeper than just the latest TikTok fads.
Bridgette Redman, travel writer and culture journalist who co-wrote the International SPA Association’s textbook on spas, explains that the concept of Nordic Spas may have taken off in popularity thanks to our recent cultural obsession with cold plunging. But while cold plunges are a key element of Nordic spas, many people may not recognize the connection.
“In the last year, I started seeing all sorts of articles from people saying they did a cold plunge. Cold plunges really swung up as a trend,” says Redman, adding that she is “very curious” about whether more spas will invest in the infrastructure needed to make cold plunges part of spa culture for good. The high investment required for spas to build cold plunges makes it challenging for facilities that weren’t designed with Nordic spa traditions in mind, Redman explains. “It’s not like just adding a different sort of facial or buying a piece of equipment.” (Alyeska’s Nordic spa facilities, for instance, were a $15 million investment.)
One of the most “old school” and iconic hydrotherapy spas to exist is undoubtedly the Russian and Turkish Baths on New York City’s Lower East Side. There, nothing feels trendy or fad-ish. Established in 1892, the historic bathhouse offers a traditional Russian “banya,” or wood-heated steam room, along with a Turkish steam room and icy cold plunge pool.
Diana Robinson Photography via Getty Images
Visitors can even request the invigorating platza oak leaf treatment, where the skin is exfoliated through vigorous brushing with olive oil soap-soaked oak leaves. This treatment is said to promote circulation and leave the body feeling refreshed and rejuvenated (my skin, for one, was smooth and shiny, after my first platza treatment in 2022).
Perhaps the most fun Nordic spa experience of 2024 was in July, when I visited Löyly in Helsinki. For just 25€, guests can book a public sauna visit inside the sleek, eco-friendly waterfront building that doubles as a restaurant and social spot.
Guests can rotate between three types of saunas, each heated with wood (the Finnish way). After a steamy session, you can cool off with a dip in the Baltic Sea.
The author’s passion for these travel experiences is sincere. Some trips featured may be sponsored or compensated.
Megan DeMatteo is an independent journalist, editor and creative writer currently based in New York City. She has written for Dwell, Fodor’s Travel, Sherwood News, Marie Claire, Insider and more. Her first trip abroad was to Costa Rica, and she’s since studied in Valparaíso, Chile and Dublin, Ireland, where she performed a séance in Oscar Wilde’s former dorm room.
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Publish date : 2024-07-28 15:47:26
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