At Bruflat Sauna, which has run continuously since 1952 without ever going private, an 83-year-old member recalls being there on opening day, seventy-six years ago. Originally built so local schoolchildren could wash before the weekend at a time when the area had no showers or running water, Bruflat has stayed a public institution through what one bather calls a "recent sauna boom" it predates. Elsewhere, a newer arrival to Norway describes the sauna as one of the only places she can speak with Norwegians freely, and a group of regulars insist that without it, they'd lose their weekly forum for arguing through politics, sports, and the state of the world. Fire Between the Fjords follows both ends of that tradition: the decades-old institution and the community still being built around it.