A legend is told of our sauna grounds…
Near the smoke sauna, there is a runestone and a gate to Valhalla. According to legend, a great chieftain once lived here. One day, he set off to raid the land of the Swedes, and returned home with a number of slaves. Having fought a bloody and exhausting battle, the chieftain demanded that a sauna be heated up, so that he may soothe his wounds. But the chieftain was a great sauna lover and a tough man, and refused to enter the sauna before it had been heated for two days straight. Alas, this time the sauna had become so hot that once the chieftain finally sat down in the steam room, the whole sauna suddenly burst into flames. Yet this did not deter the Viking seafarer in the slightest – instead, the chieftain cursed in annoyance, vowing that he would not leave the sauna without a good steaming whether the rafters burned up or not. Thus he sat there, beating himself with branches and pouring water onto the hot stones until nothing but the stones and stove were left. Then, in outrage, the chieftain said something in the tongue of the sorcerers, removed his ring from his finger, set it down on the ground, grabbed the smallest stone from the pile, and smashed it down on the ring with such force that sparks were sent flying high into the air and both the stone and the ring sank two feet deep into the ground. Then he cursed once more and announced that he was going off to Valhalla, because the chieftains there were said to have better saunas, which were built into the ground. And so the chieftain grabbed his sword and shield, took a few steps and vanished into thin air. The locals say that the gods had considered the chieftain’s ring a worthy enough sacrifice to open the gates to Valhalla for him for that instant. Later, over time, strange runic symbols appeared on the sauna stones, supposedly magical in origin.
