Facing Smaug’s Fire

Stories of unexpected connection in the men’s sauna. 

By Sona Wink

Illustration by Lulu Fleming-Benite

Men: What are they saying?

I contemplate this important question when I sit in the women’s sauna, hearing muffled conversations from the men’s emanate through the cedar-planked wall. Despite the fact that my question is useless, and despite the fact that Blue and White writers tend to focus their journalistic endeavors towards places they can actually visit and observe, I set out on a thorough campaign to discover the answer. By “thorough” I mean, I asked some male friends to tell me sauna stories. Here are my discoveries. 

Oliver Rice, CC ’25, shared two short, punchy stories. One evening, he spoke at length in French with two Francophones in the sauna. Other men were present, but they sat in silence. The silence erupted into excited chatter when one of the Frenchmen said the word “Bitcoin” in English. “People were talking about how the election was, unsurprisingly, very good for Bitcoin,” Oliver said. The men all profited from the boost in crypto’s value. He described the moment as “fraternal.” Unfortunately, Oliver had no Bitcoin investments. “That was the point at which I couldn’t participate anymore.”

On another occasion, Oliver sat in the sauna with three freshmen and two elderly men. One of the freshmen began to speak of a friend’s sex life in profane detail. The other two, conscious of the presence of their fellow sauna-dwellers, exclaimed, “Bro! Chill!” Oliver was heartened by the moment: “It was nice to see these 18-year-old finance bros be sensitive about how to talk about sex, especially in an all-male environment where they might have a pass,” he said. “Turns out they’re not talking like that in locker rooms anymore.”

The last story is dear to my heart. It comes from my roommate, Oscar Luckett, CC ’25, who went to the sauna on a dreary December evening to unwind. He set the scene: “It’s packed. It’s silent. It’s finals.” The room was so crowded that every seat was taken and six men were standing. The air was tense. “People are sweating; people are focusing.” The lights, as always, were off.

One man stood near the exit, backlit by the fluorescent light pouring through the glass door. He broke the silence with a request: “I’d like to try something, is that OK?” No one answered. He proceeded to sing all five minutes of Ed Sheeran’s epic 2013 ballad “I See Fire.” The man was, as Oscar described, “playing it on his phone, singing along karaoke-style, but Ed Sheeran was also singing.” The man panted as he sang. Oscar struggled to remember the name of the movie that Sheeran wrote the song for. “Something to do with Smaug. Smaug is involved.” (Smaug was, indeed, involved. The film in question was The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.)

What moved this man to sing a decade-old Ed Sheeran song from a Hobbit movie? What prompted him to break the status quo of tense, sweaty silence? Perhaps he lost a bet; perhaps it was all a practical joke. The lyrics of the song are entirely apt for a sauna: Sheeran sings about withering fire and “heat upon my skin.” Maybe the anonymous singer sought to make his fellow sauna-dwellers chuckle during finals.

I choose to believe that this moment goes deeper than a prank. I have forced Oscar to tell me this story at least five times both because it delights me and because it is strangely poignant. It captures the sort of itchy energy that pulsates when one inhabits a small, transient space with strangers: an elevator, a waiting room, or a long-haul Amtrak ride, for example. Sometimes, someone ruptures the silence and something glorious happens.

“Love” is perhaps the wrong word to describe these fleeting moments of unexpected social connection, however it cannot be excluded from our analysis. “I See Fire” is a song about love, but not romantic love: Sheeran addresses his brothers and father. He sings of longing for fraternity in the face of grave danger (Smaug-related danger, presumably, but I’ve never seen the movie). 

Perhaps, facing the doom of finals, the anonymous sauna-singer sought to inspire a sense of brotherhood in his sweaty brethren. Panting, in the dark, out on a limb, he sang alongside Sheeran, “If this is to end in fire / then we should all burn together.”