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No More Birch Beatings At Grand Hotel Stockholm's New Spa

Where: S Blasieholmshamnen 8 , Stockholm, Sweden, 103 27

OK so normally we wouldn’t be so excited by the idea of a “Nordic spa”. In our heads, Scandi beauty treatments scream naked saunas, self-flagellation with birch sticks and lots of snow. But we’re making an exception for the Grand Hotel in Stockholm which opened a subtly different “Nordic-inspired spa”, Raison d’Etre, yesterday.

Yes, they have the birch – harvested from local forests, don’t you know – but they do far more exciting stuff than beat you with it. The Be Rested package is a massage ad “hot birch pack” to make you sleep, while the Be Balanced treatment claims to “gently realign” your bones through the power of, um, mung bean pillows.

They’re pretty pricey – 2190 Kronor, or $318, apiece, but last two hours. And the website – which asks you questions like “How do you want to be today? Like a raindrop falling from the sky?” and “If you were a tree, what would you be?” – is really calling to us. And how idyllic does that pool look for a winter soak. Gimmicky, us? Never.