As one of the old school operators in the sauna industry, we feel being very much responsible for preserving the Finnish sauna heritage in our daily presence. We take that mission quite seriously, and it guides us in our daily tasks and decision-making.
Our company name originates from a lake called Narvi in the Southwestern part of Finland. The village is called Lappi, which often causes funny misunderstandings when people try to google where we are located. On the shores of lake Narvi, brothers Rautavuori were local blacksmiths serving the nearby areas with their handcraft skills, and they ended up founding the company just before the second world war. As they happened to be sauna lovers, and Finns, and handy with steel – they ended up making their own wood-burning sauna stoves.
Narvi – what does the name stand for today
Our company values and are quite primitive and we rather keep our feet to the ground. We want people to have good saunas, and we want our own people to be happy while working on that mission. Our value proposition Maximum Relaxation stands for that specifically. Sauna will make you relax. In a good sauna you relax more likely than in a poor sauna. Very simple, we think. Amount of money spent on the sauna has nothing to do with that, or at least it doesn’t guarantee a nice relaxation space.
Narvi way to relax is to have a proper sauna. By proper, we mean a well-ventilated room made of wood. The heat shall come from stones – not from the metal parts of the heat supply or the construction. With löyly, you control both temperature and humidity.
The best possible sauna stove that Narvi can name, is a self-made smoke sauna stove. The next best choice would be our Aitokiuas. The mutual feature of these sauna stoves is the accumulated heat. When the sauna is being used, the room is completely silent, and the energy is preserved in the stone. Whether you want to break the silence by talking, singing, or screaming is exclusively up to you.
Relaxation vs. health effects
Sauna has finally been highlighted by scientists, also globally. It is really cool that our products have fantastic health effects, but we cannot state they were originally designed to do that. We are quite sure that the Rautavuori brothers made them to have good löyly instead of upgrading their cardiovascular condition. Narvi goes with relaxation, but warmly welcomes the health benefits and stands proudly behind the great facts.
Cold is a good example of this. The very booming cold plunging has also been noticed in big scale lately. For us (Finns), the plunge is available pretty much all the time and we call it avanto. Many saunas are located lake- or seaside, and our climate keeps the water below swimming conditions for most of the year. For decades, Finns have wandered between the sauna and cold water. Before medical studies proved the benefits of this, they most likely did it for the same reasons that the go to sauna in the first place. It feels good, and makes you relax.
