In win­ter 2016, Jukka Nyman, a long-time sauna mas­ter at Ponsse Club, was about to retire, and the search for his succes­sor star­ted. What would be a bet­ter place to adver­tise a vacancy than Hel­sin­gin Sano­mat, the lar­gest daily news­pa­per in Fin­land.

On the 1st of April 2016, a single job adver­ti­se­ment deco­ra­ted the pages of Hel­sin­gin Sano­mat. In the adver­ti­se­ment, Ponsse from Vie­remä was seriously loo­king for a “skil­led chim­ney­less smoke sauna ope­ra­tor”.

The adver­ti­se­ment was writ­ten with a twinkle in the eye and in the Savo dia­lect which is spo­ken in Vie­remä. The requi­re­ments set for the sauna mas­ter inclu­ded:

• - Lis­te­ning compre­hen­sion of the Savo lan­guage
• - Abi­lity to recog­nise dif­fe­rent types of firewood
• - Good beha­viour when dea­ling with foreig­ners

Seve­ral dozen inqui­ries were recei­ved for the posi­tion, alt­hough many timidly asked whet­her this was an April Fools’ Day prank.

Howe­ver, Jukka’s succes­sor was found in-house. Lassi Heik­ki­nen is fol­lowing in Jukka’s foots­teps, ensu­ring that the sauna tem­pe­ra­ture is just right for each group of visi­tors.

During his 15-year career as the sauna mas­ter, Jukka hea­ted the chim­ney­less smoke
sauna 1,858 times. In fact, the sauna was hea­ted almost every other night, and the skil­fully hea­ted sauna has enve­lo­ped thousands of visi­tors from both Fin­land and all cor­ners of the world.

On the day of his reti­re­ment, Jukka was also fea­tu­red on the Fin­nish MTV3 main news broadcast because of his unique job desc­rip­tion.