The finnish array of folklore creatures mainly exists outside of any human understanding of good, evil, right, or wrong. Or to be more specific, their personal moral codes - if they have any - have no regard for human wellbeing. This includes household spirits. A house elf is attached to the house, not the people, and it does not give a shit about individual human beings, but grudgingly aknowledges that whatever's good for the household is usually good for the house. But it will not tolerate residents who don't maintain it.
The sauna in essentially a sacred place. Not in connection to any particular divinity, but sanctified for washing and cleansing. People gave birth and were born in the sauna, because it was the cleanest place to do so. The sauna was were the dead were given their final wash before burial. You strip naked and rinse yourseld before going in because your skin and your clothes are dirty, and in the sauna you sweat out the dirt still in your pores. Every surface of the sauna is scrubbed clean at least twice per year, for christmas and summer solstice.
The sauna, too, has a guardian spirit. And just like the house elf, the sauna elf does not give a shit about you. Their duty is to guard the sauna. See that it's heated appropriately, washed properly, treated with reverence and used with respect. If you fuck around with the sauna, the spirit can and will kill you. You jack off in there too many times and the elf will straight-up skin you alive, eyelids and all.
There's been joking discussion about whether all saunas have an elf or not - some say that all saunas do, some say that only wood stove saunas do and electric saunas don't, the jury is out there. I for one have observed that my facial piercings start burning in an electric sauna, but not in a wood one, though I don't know why a sauna elf would particularly approve of them.
That being said, the saunas that I am certain do absolutely not have a guardian spirit in them are the ones at the american gyms y'all are talking about. Because if you can walk in there without showering, in your sweaty gym clothes, with your shoes on, and watch tiktoks on your loud-ass phone with no headphones on, that is either not a true sanctified bathing sauna, or nobody is going to leave that building alive today.
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