The Finnish Line

Sisu requires constant work, Heikkila says, especially in the winter. That's the real test. Finnish winters, while they may help people increase their sisu, can also have the opposite effect of wearing them down. Unfortunately, many younger Finns have gotten fat and lazy, he laments. "Life is too easy. They're losing their sisu. That's for sure." Not a problem for Heikkila, who works on his sisu every chance he gets, often at his cottage in southern Finland, where he and his wife like to take scorching saunas followed in winter by a low-centigrade skinny-dip.

"You ought to try it," he says, warning that I should be careful. The wrong combination of hot and cold could ruin my vacation. I'm glad he reminds me. With all the sisu-enhancing sit-ups and squat thrusts he wants me to do, I forget I'm on one.

BACK IN HELSINKI, IT'S TIME FOR THE NEXT -- maybe the ultimate -- step. After taking Heikkila's advice and getting in touch with the Finnish Sauna Society, I hop a tram in front of the Swedish Theater in the center of downtown. Finns are preoccupied with their national identity. This country is Nordic, they proclaim, not Scandinavian, even if Swedish is the second official language, as well as an occasional nuisance. I once saw "Pulp Fiction" in Helsinki, and the Finnish and Swedish subtitles took up half the screen.

On a night like tonight, nothing in Finland says more about national identity than a sauna; there are more than 2 million saunas in the country, or roughly one for every two of Finland's 5.5 million people. It's not only snowing, there's also an Arctic cold front blowing in, the kind of cold that numbs the extremities and puts survival instincts on high alert. When I arrive at the society's rustic lodge at the end of an ice-covered road, Seppo Pukkila, my host for the evening, is waiting. Pukkila used to live in Chicago, he says, adding with a note of civic pride that Helsinki is colder. We strip, shower and head for one of three smoke saunas. An old Finnish tradition, a smoke sauna takes half a day to prepare. A wood fire is started in the morning to heat the sauna room, and after the smoke clears hours later it's ready to use.

"We call this one 'purgatory,'" Pukkila says, grinning.

The minute I open the door I'm hit with a blast of hot air that takes my breath away. The room has the smell of woodsy aftershave. In the dim light I can make out the shadowy figures of three naked men sitting on elevated benches. (Female members have the facilities to themselves on Mondays and Thursdays.) Pukkila introduces me, and the conversation switches to English. When he brings up my search for sisu, everyone says that I've come to the right place.

Two minutes in purgatory is all I can take.

Pukkila leads the way to the back porch, crowded with more naked guys of various ages, shapes and sizes, each steamed to a bright red. There are bankers, mechanics, artists and bureaucrats, men from all walks of Finnish life, bound together by a common devotion to toasting, then freezing, their buns off.

It's snowing and cold, but the heat from the sauna will keep us warm for the next few minutes, says Pukkila. More than enough time for what he ominously calls "phase two."

We proceed nude to the end of the society's pier, where a ladder disappears into the slushy Baltic Sea six feet below. Pukkila goes first. The idea is to climb down the ladder and, when the water is chin high, let go.

"Don't stop," cautions Pukkila. "Go straight in. It's the only way."

Stepping into the sea is like a shot of Novocain. The effect quickly spreads up my legs and back, then down my arms. When I'm up to my neck, I slip into the dark water, churned to the consistency of a Slurpee by a little wave-making machine under the pier. It's hard to tell if my nervous system is shutting down or revving up. In any case I can't feel a thing, except snowflakes hitting my forehead, until Pukkila taps me on the shoulder 15 seconds later, signaling it's time to go.

After another round trip from the sauna to the sea, Pukkila says he has to leave for a meeting. That means I'm on my own. During my fifth and final visit to purgatory I stay for almost three minutes, my personal best. At the end of the pier, it no longer seems strange to be naked and climbing into the freezing water. As I'm congratulating myself, I hear a sudden splash behind me and turn to see a big brown duck. I've never been eye to eye with a duck in its natural habitat. The two of us share a moment bobbing in the ice-cold sea before I have to get out.

I think I feel my inner Finn stirring.

Wrapped in a towel and enjoying a beer and sausage by a roaring fireplace in the rec room, I tell a society veteran about my encounter with the duck.

"Oh, that one," he says. "He drops in from time to time. We should make him pay dues."

ON MY LAST NIGHT IN HELSINKI, I get together with Stites and some of his friends at the Cafe Strindberg on the Esplanade, the city's main thoroughfare. Stites is in his usual jovial mood, and before long has the group of half a dozen people laughing at his recap of my sisu quest.

"This sisu stuff is somewhat overrated," declares Geoff White, a Brit who's been living in Helsinki for years. Stites disagrees. "Finnish women have a lot of sisu," he insists. "They hold the country together."

As an example someone mentions "The Cuckoo," a recent Russian film set in World War II. The movie is about an earthy Lapp woman, living alone in her empty village until a wounded Russian soldier and a Finnish army deserter show up. She nurses the Russian back to health and puts the cynical Finn to work. It soon becomes clear that the woman is far more adept at most things than the soldiers, whom she feeds, clothes and invites into her hut one at a time on an as-needed basis.

White concedes that Finnish women can be formidable, but they also have "a soft side," he says, suggesting I see for myself at the Miss Finland Contest. The contest is being held that night at Helsinki's largest casino, the Grand Hotel, near the railroad station.

Outside there are television trucks and a line of people waiting to get in. By the time I make it inside, the ballroom is full, and the only place to find a seat is at the bar, where White and his Russian girlfriend, Ludmilla, are watching the pageant on a big-screen TV. This year's event, I learn, has been marred by scandal. Instead of the usual 10 finalists, there are only nine. One was dropped the day before for conduct unbecoming a potential Miss Finland. She reportedly had a criminal record and had posed for pornographic pictures.

"You might expect something like that to happen in Sweden, but not here," says a Finnish woman providing me with simultaneous translation.

Tonight is the evening gown portion of the competition, when finalists also have to answer questions. One is asked to name the last book she read, to which she replies, One Hundred Years of Solitude , the ideal tome for this time of year in Finland.

White and Ludmilla are soon bored and leave to gamble, but I want to see who wins. That honor goes to a knockout from the Helsinki area. There's much excitement when the judges' decision is announced and the winner is crowned.

Later, as contestants file out of the ballroom, some of them stop at the bar. I tell a blue-eyed blonde I recognize as a runner-up that she should have won and offer to buy her a drink. But she has one already.

What will you do? I ask, meaning what will she do with her life now that someone else has become Miss Finland.

She flashes the same gleaming smile I just saw on television, tosses back her golden hair and says, "I'm going ice fishing with my mother."

Now that's sisu.

Bill Thomas is co-author of Red Tape: Adventure Capitalism in the New Russia. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.