The cultural platform, art festival SALT, is promoting unique installations, music and a collection of architectural structures. This year the festival is launching the world’s largest sauna.
The SALT festival, which celebrates the culture and landscape of the Arctic region, takes place at the sandy shores of the Norwegian island of Sandhornøy and runs into 2016.
The new sauna, named Agora and claimed to be the largest public sauna in the world, opened this summer. We also believe that no other sauna in the entire world give the guests a more extraordinary and breathtaking panoramic view over the Arctic Sea and the island’s mountain landscape.
Agora, housing up to 150 people, is set within a timber A-frame and includes a bar where visitors have a place for social exchange, complemented with ambient background soundtrack.
More closely Agora resembles a set of bleachers or an amphitheater than an average boxy sauna. The pace will in fact, when not heated, be used as a lecture hall for festival events.
Most of the festival’s buildings are modeled after traditional Norwegian fish-drying racks, referencing the livelihood of many of the area’s inhabitants.
The festival is just outside the town of Bodø, and you may fly directrly from Oslo, Trondheim or Tromsø. Travelers can access the SALT site in just over an hour by car, bus or boat from Bodø in just 30 minutes. And for those who need a respite from the heat, there’s actually a bar inside offering cool libations.
The venue will be open every Saturday between 12pm and 6pm until the autumn. Entry fee is NOK 175 for adults and NOK 90 for children under 17. Towels and bathrobes can be rented at the sauna.
After the stay in Sandhornøy, the festival, with its sauna and all, will make stops in Greenland, Iceland, the Faraoe Islands and other Arctic states.
The SALT site also features a large scale gallery structure known as The Arctic Pyramid which exhibits different art projects, such as its current video installation called ‘The Light That I Feel’. The site also has a live performance hall, Gildehallen, which can hold up to 1,000 people for concerts, club nights and dining events.
Guests can also access Naustet Bistro, a café and bar space featuring the Lantemen Restaurant which offers Norwegian fare made from fresh locally-sourced seasonal ingredients.
All images, courtesy SALT Festival.
World’s Largest Sauna – in Norway , written by Tor Kjolberg
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