ODDEN SAUNA FESTIVAL
At the end of November every second year, Odden Saunafestival transforms the old harbour in Havnebyen, Sjællands Odde, into a temporary landscape of saunas, hot tubs, music, performance, food, winter darkness and the cold Kattegat sea.
The festival took place in 2022 and 2024 and returns for its third edition in 2026, bringing together around 110–120 people for an evening of art, wellness, togetherness and unusual encounters.
The basic idea is simple: What happens when we move music, performance and art out of their traditional spaces and into the sauna?
A sauna is already an unusual social space. People sit close together, naked or in swimsuits, sweating in the heat, and the usual physical and social boundaries begin to shift. When the sauna simultaneously becomes a concert hall, theatre, drawing studio, kitchen or place for collective singing, a different relationship emerges between artist, audience and artwork.
The festival explores this meeting between art, performance, music, the body and social life, with the fishing boats, fresh sea air, winter darkness and cold water of Sjællands Odde as part of the setting.
(DR TV-AVISEN (Prime Time News) – 18:30, 24. November 2024)
In 2026 the program is as follows:
Groove Sauna // Life Drawing Sauna // Gourmet Sauna // Icelandic Baðstofa // Finnish Birch Sauna // Puppet Theatre Sauna // Community Singing Sauna // Cold-Water Disco // Ukrainian Guest Artist // Karaoke Sauna // Monologue Sauna // Sauna Gus // Pop-up Sensory Experience // Lounge Music // Hot Tubs // Colourful Lights // Refreshing Sea // Lovely People // Winter Darkness // Much More
In 2024 the program was as follows:
Den Outer Sauna // Gourmet Sauna // Vølven’s Sweat Hut // Community song Sauna // Scrub Sauna // Whale Sauna // Karaoke Sauna // Puppet Theater Sauna // Shadow Sauna // Music Box Sauna // Gusjam // Farie Tale Sauna // Sauna Gus and much more.
In 2022 the program was as follows:
Trumpet shower // Gourmet Sauna // Quiz Sauna // Lecture Sauna // Adventurous Stories Sauna // Poetry Sauna // Sound Gus // Community Song Sauna and much more.
Food, beer, and wine were locally produced and made with local raw materials.
Steen Andersen was together with Petter Brandberg the initiator and coordinator of the festival.
The festival is a collaboration between local partners to strengthen the use of the sea, nature, the body, and social harmony in new ways. The festival is non-profit and any profits go to the next sauna event, and other cultural and social activities on Sjællands Odde.
Photos: Susser Preuss
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SAUNA EVENT – COPENHAGEN
Since 2015, Sauna Event has been inviting to a wonderful winter day in the name of well-being. Sauna Event was a one-day festival for do-it-yourself sauna builders, sauna enthusiasts, gus masters, music lovers, and all other Copenhagen citizens who were interested in a joint social and intimate event. At Sauna Event, the guests could relax in communal saunas, experience sauna guys, enjoy the sea view, and the starry sky, bathe in warm wilderness tubs and have a cold thrill in the harbor while listening to electronic tones in the winter darkness or experience different sound universes in specially selected saunas.
The festival was created through an interdisciplinary collaboration in 2015 between PB43, Danske Naturister, and Det Danske Saunaselskab, and in 2016 the festival expanded with new partners, including Illutron, Sjællandsgade Badet, the festival for electronic music Strøm and Det Runde Bord. In the following years, additional partners joined and in addition to Copenhagen, the festival was also held in Aarhus, the second-largest city of Denmark.
Steen Andersen was together with, among others, Iben Elmström, one of the co-initiators and co-coordinators of the Sauna Event in 2015 and 2016.
Around 300 sauna guests participated each year and the festival was run by a large group of volunteers. The last Sauna Event was held in 2019.
Photos: Maria Dembek // Robin McAulay