Bets bare all in sauna campaigning

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — Danes are accustomed to seeing their politicians hand out biscuits or flowers on the campaign trail, but ahead of elections next week, some candidates are stripping down to stump in saunas.

“This is quite different because people are relaxed and we are all stuck there, so we don’t leave,” smiled Gitte Droger, a 53-year-old voter who is a regular sauna-goer at her local wellness center in Copenhagen’s Vanlose neighborhood.

With just over a week to go until the country’s 24 March legislative election, two candidates from Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democratic party met voters for a sweat session, clad in their bathing suits.

Member of parliament Ida Auken joined Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard to speak to 18 voters on Sunday about the climate, energy, inequality and crime, occasionally ladling water over the sauna’s hot rocks as they talked.

The heat was intense and enveloping as the audience — also clad in bathing suits, seated on towels placed on the wooden benches — listened to Auken and Hummelgaard present their ideas and answer questions.

“It’s the first time I’ve campaigned in a sauna,” Auken told Agence France-Presse.

“This whole election has been a lot of these things for me, different (kinds of) campaigning: playing handball and going to bars instead of sitting on panels,” she said.

Hummelgaard tried an indoor ice bath for the first time in between two rounds in the sauna.

“Campaigning also has to be fun,” he said.

“It’s a long campaign. It’s four very intense weeks, we’re at it all the time and I thought this would be a calming and great experience while meeting voters.”