a wild sauna emerging
from our hands and visions
into the crack on the hill
beneath the hain
a womb like spider net
merging into the lands
where human bodies sweat
in vapour, elementally attuned
conspiring with plant spirits
whisking waves of heat
amongst the mosses and stones
as the aspens whisper above us
where the tides feel like two
deep deep deep inhales
and exhales per day
a surrender to slowness and noticing
stories from the
age of humans
displacing ourselves from eden
hollowing out life and land
seeking apples and portals
to re-remember, de-center
shift
. . .
How can multispeciesness be lived? How can we co-habit in post-antroprocentric/ post-humanist ways? What is and how can we practise ecological diplomacy? How can sweating in a co-created wild saunas open us up to new perspectives? And what does all of that have to do with northern lights?
Well, I went on a quest to Norway to explore those questions (and more) with the Bathing & Beyond project on the Atlantic coast south of Kristianssund at Eden Baths where artist Nazarè Soares and her partner are creating a water sanctuary (and more) - on a wildly beautiful piece of land where herons fly low, and deers run in threes at twilight. Located in the intertidal zone of the Atlantic ocean shaping the landscape into a multifaceted ecotone full of lifeforms and contrasts, rawness and softness mingling, adapting, and fluctuating.
One might think, what does multispecies landscape design and sauna building have to do with each other? The workshop called to construct a wild, prehistoric sauna with natural materials through the lens of exploring multispecies respecting ways of placemaking using user survey and need analysis and a “Parliament of Species” to negotiate the needs, effects and come to a decision of where to build. Essentially, we practised opening ones eyes to how we humans shape and squeeze the land and attempted to look beyong ourselves.
Facing mirrors of broken ecological balance
I was curious about ecological diplomacy, or wild diplomacy as French environmental philosopher Baptiste Morizot calls it. This idea challenges the focus on sole human interests, and argues for the focus on relations as such, and aims for the mutual flourishing of both (reminding me Robin Wall Kimmerers all flourish in mutual teaching on principles of reciprocity).
Elin T. Sørensen is an artist, marine landscape architect, and independent researcher, whose practice spans eco-social community art, urban rewilding, multispecies design and placemaking. She was one of two facilitators of this workshop. Elin reminded us through her multispecies stories that many beings that annoy, challenge, disrupt us or our environments, such as slugs - which have been very increasing rapidly, glossing the gardens, farms and fields with their neverending hunger and slimy traces - are beyond their invasive label, involuntary migrants, who have been brought over from Spain through excessive, season-bypassing produce transport. Shifting to this perspective allows us to see that actually they are mirrors of the broken ecological balance created by ourselves.
The discussion on invasion biology is a whole other bottomless bucket to open, but next time you encounter a species you get annoyed with, maybe ask yourself what stories do I know about them, and what more might there be to it, explore other sides of the coins. Learn how local entities and species live and what they need.
Looking beyond human needs
Did you know Maslow never drew a pyramid to order his needs into a hierarchical order? And how does it change when we draw the needs as a circle? We can suddenly see their independence and relations, that it’s not linear, but dynamic. Another example how the dominant mechanistic worldview has forced us into a rigid step-by-step model, whereas real life is much more complex and messy, and an ecosystem, not a line.
How is this connected? Well, when we build new structures there is a procedure of need analysis or user survey which usually solely includes humans. Therefore we went on a multispecies expedition with the task to explore life and place through the lens of a more-than-human companion and the elements, we shifted perspectives, researched the entities and their needs. Attuning to the stories that cannot be seen just right there is quite a task. They are hidden, to some invisible, they linger all around and it takes practice, time and imagination to tap into them.
A multispecies expedition
For the expedition and decision process, we were meeting in groups of three with the task of scouting the lands for possible sauna locations, and finding a more-than-human companion to speak for in the Parliament of Species. The exploration led us onto a little hill where we instantly felt drawn to a crack, a micro canyon formed of stones full of moss and leaves. Something magical seemed to attract us. Yet we felt this was maybe not really a place for a sauna - little did we know.
Further on the hill we noticed the many spider webs, visible with the morning dew different in shape in the heathers and flora of the hill by the sea. All quite low. The webs looked different, not the usual circles, but cocoon-like. It mesmerised us and let us explore worlds often unseen by humans eyes, the life underground, life that only gets visible in certain conditions.
This is when and where I dropped a ring. A little silver ring I always play with when I think, I turn it, move it up and down my finger, and there it slipped, dropped, rolled, disappeared through the planks of the little wooden deck we were sitting on in the autumn sun. A drop that forced us to the ground, under the deck, into a microcosm that never gets much light. Here, we met soil and mushrooms, screws, sticks, wetness and light-shy plants - crawling in the soil, seeking the ring - we only after realised what gift we received, a moment to zoom into places we othwrwise would not pay attention to (the ring was found later that day).
We are the spider - facts, research and speculations
Maybe you guessed it already, the spider became our companion. Sørensen’s approach focuses on merging imagination with research and factual understanding. We spent time diving into the world of spiders - their needs, their roles in the ecosystem - while also speculating beyond pure facts. Thinkers like Donna Haraway urges us to tap into speculation and fabulation, yet Sørensen reminds us that we still ground ourselves in research and factual knowledge that help us understand the lives, rhythms, and needs of other species, we can move deeper. By exploring the environment through both lenses - research and imagination - I noticed how the volume of my human perspectives got lower and I tuned into everything else that lives and exists alongside.
The Parliament of Species draws inspiration from Bruno Latour’s Parliament of Things, with the goal of creating shared spaces where all local species can reach their full potential, flourish, and thrive. Participants were invited to negotiate and discuss from the perspective of their chosen species - no human voices in this parliament. Each group wrote a story from their species’ point of view to make a statement at the parliament, followed by a discussion on land use and co-habitation.
Eventually, we gathered as a group to visit the sites each team had identified as possible locations for the sauna. We examined these places from multiple angles: How are the natural elements balanced here? Is there access to water? Is there wind for ventilation? Will the fire burn properly and generate enough heat? What is the quality of the ground - can stones be transported here? What impact will the structure have on local species, where will the impact be smallest? And finally, how feasible is construction for us humans?
In the end, we chose the small canyon we had discovered earlier - a place where the structure could merge with the landscape rather than dominate it, as it seeemd possible to use existing natural formations and take inspiration from the spider’s way of building: an architecture that anchors itself to its surroundings, weaving connections rather than imposing boundaries.
Welcome to the more-than-sauna
The second lens came from the second facilitator, Lithuanian sauna master Rimas Kavaliauskas, cultural researcher and founder of the International Bath Academy. He works to keep the Baltic smoke sauna and bathing practices alive and revive them with a focus on their roots in deep ecology and communal care.
I won’t get into the richness of sauna and bathing culture, let me just say there is so much more beyond the Finnish sauna paradigm as well as the growing last centuries wellness fetishising focusing solely on human health. The more than sauna - bathing beyond the physical space of the sauna, the ritual, the practice which makes it intangible cultural heritage.
Essentially, bathing is so old requiring a fine balance of the elements when built and used (when it’s a smoke sauna, not electric). Wild prehistoric sauna making is a process, an exploration, requiring trust in the group and place. The sauna is a liminal space of refuge, of ritual, and transformation. As a group we created a temporary wild sauna using local stones, wood, canvas and turf. The journey of placemaking as an act of listening and negotiating with the lands and the more-than-human inhabitants felt emergent, as there was not sketch, no manual to follow, but a group effort of led by Kavaliauskas.
Building the stove with the stones from the sea, setting them carefully onto each other forming the womb for the fire, stitching the canvas together, binding strings to the trees, sowing the roof around the tree branches, closing gaps with turf, binding aspen and birch wisks….and bathing as a group in the space we had created together, smelling hay, wool, smoke and sweat, sitting with our intentions and emerging anew from the wild web womb as the sun left.
Intentions meeting reality and habits
The process of both deciding and beginning the build was fast - it had to be. Time was limited, and the sense of urgency was high; at least it felt that way. By the time we started, there was not much light left. Only once we were already clearing the crack of leaves did it dawn on us that something didn’t feel right. It felt rushed - as if, after all the exploration and negotiation, we had somehow forgotten to truly look at the place, to ask for permission, or to offer gratitude. So we paused, and did just that.
It was a powerful reminder: we had just practiced a new way of approaching things, and then immediately fallen back into the old one - the very attitude we wanted to challenge. I wasn’t sure I would mention this here, but it turned out to be one of the biggest aha moments. We caught ourselves, as a group, realizing that the deep unlearning we need to do - as individuals, as a collective, as humanity - won’t just happen because we hold good or new intentions. It’s going to be messy, full of trial and error.
Entering of (x) time
*x = lichen, deep, spider, plant, heron, stone, …., …..
The exploration and practice taught me many things, but maybe most urgently about matters of time, perceptions of time, and how human time is widely different from other time - plant time, deep time, lichen time, spider time….our ways of moving, and accelerating, of progress have brought us out of resonance (Hartmut Rosa, read more here) with the rhythms of the lands around us.
The time it takes for stones to form, the moss to grow, the trees to sprout and become forest, the labour, the time to fire up the stove, three hours of warming until the smoke is gone. In times of instant gratification, convenience and same-day delivery, entering another time than capitalist time of constant urgency can seem quite a challenge.
In the end many questions (from the beginning) are still questions - questions to be lived (yes, it’s time to re-read Rilke’s letters to a young poet) for now, instead of being answered. And I will add a layer of approximating - nothing is total, final, no final answers, maybe all we ever can do is to approximate, to approach, cause we will never know for sure, what impacts we (humans) will have, as much as we can research with human eyes and mind, we won’t have the planetary time to really capture the complexities of ecosystem workings, we’d only ever know a fraction. And that comes with responsibility, humility and adjusting to constant change - which well brings me to the last question and auroras.
It had been a dream of mine for many years, to see the northern lights. I just didn’t think I’d get to see them on this trip, didn’t even think about it, which made it such an incredible gift to witness. It felt as the sky, and life, and the universe romanced me with this sight in the skies, a visible manifestation of our planet’s protective magnetic field. As the green waves were dancing above us, in their constantly changing patterns, mesmerising our gazes, I felt it deep inside, the constant becoming of life - the ever-changing nature of life and how little I know.
I believe that multispecies encounters and experiences are where the/ a portal might be to move from the age of humans to other stories. As anthropologist Anna L. Tsing argues “We are contaminated by our encounters; they change who we are as we make way for others.”
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Prehistoric Bathing & The Parliament of Species, 26–29 September 2025 at Eden Baths @edenbaths. A multispecies & wild sauna workshop led by Elin T. Sørensen (@elin_t_sorensen) & Rimas Kavaliauskas (@whisking_and_steam). Bathing & Beyond Project is curated by Nazaré Soares (@whitemirroroddities), Produced by Eden Baths @edenbaths. Supported by Nordisk Kulturfond, Globus Program.