You think you love a sauna? You’ve got nothing on the Finns. Here, a primer on how Finland became obsessed with the curative power of heat
You think you love a sauna? You’ve got nothing on the Finns. Here, a primer on how Finland became obsessed with the curative power of heat
By Mary Holland /
Photographs by Maija Astikainen /
September 17, 2024
“It can be argued that taking a sauna defines Finnishness,” says Dr. Laura Seesmeri, a researcher at the University of Turku in southwestern Finland and a leading sauna expert. (Yes, there is such a thing.) “But we might also say that Finnishness defines sauna bathing.” As fundamental to a Finn’s everyday as licorice and sarcasm, the notion of “sauna” — both as a verb, to sauna, and a noun, the heated room itself — has been around as long as Finns themselves. The ritual dates back to at least 7000 B.C., though some accounts suggest the timeline goes to the Stone Age. Indeed, the very word “sauna” is Finnish.
Saunas are sacred rooms where babies have been born and communities have come together for millennia, says Dr. Seesmeri, and they have persisted through major cultural upheavals: when rural Finland urbanized; the assault of world wars; or as the sauna’s role in modern hygiene became more spiritual. Nowadays, the sauna has become a hallmark of the $5 trillion global wellness industry, with celebrities and scientists alike touting its benefits, like better blood circulation, detoxification, and joint pain reduction. Sauna needs no marketing budget, though, not when there are old Finnish adages like, “If sauna, tar, or alcohol doesn’t help, you are sick to die.”
“Everyone knows what sauna smoke smells like and what hot steam feels like on the skin,” says Dr. Seesmeri. “It makes personal bodily memories collective.” Not to be confused with a steam room, a dry-as-a-desert sauna can be equal parts therapy and town hall, where pores and hearts both open. In Emma O’Kelly’s beautiful new book on the “power of deep heat,” Sauna, from which Maija Astikainen’s images on this page are excerpted, Helsinki-based author Katja Pantzar celebrates the “beauty that arises” from the anonymity of a sauna: “You can have intimate conversations with people and you don’t even know their names.”
In this month’s Further Download, Dr. Seesmeri explains the lasting importance of sauna culture in Finland, while O’Kelly’s images show how the Finns still do it better than the rest.
It’s such an unassuming room: a simple slatted wooden cabin, not much larger than a closet, with orderly benches and an electric or wood-burning heater at its heart. Temperatures inside hover around 150 degrees F — prompting both the shedding of clothing as well as sweat — but they can reach 175 degrees, nearly hot enough to boil water.
After World War II, Finns moved en masse from the countryside to cities — and took the sauna experience with them, says Dr. Seesmeri. The goal of the sauna shifted from promoting physical cleanliness to improving mental well-being, though the tradition of sauna bathing as a communal ritual continues to be passed down from one generation to the next. “Several generations will share a sauna together, reinforcing the importance of the sauna as part of a common heritage.”
In the Finnish countryside, one stumbles upon ingenious makeshift saunas in the middle of the woods, on lakeshores — even up in trees. “Taking a sauna in the wilderness is the most desirable form of sauna,” says Dr. Seesmeri. “Yet an urban sauna bathing experience can provide a wilderness-like experience,” as something elemental, low-tech, humbling.
Saunas also double as safe spaces to mix business and politics (much like golf courses do in the U.S.). The Finnish Parliament has a sauna, says Dr. Seesmeri, and former President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, who served Finland from 1956 to 1981, made “many political decisions” within. “The new sauna culture is different,” she adds. “It is more egalitarian.”
In 2019, Finnish cardiologist Jari Laukkanen found that the subjects of his study — 2,000 middle-aged men from eastern Finland — who took regular saunas (four to seven a week) were “far healthier than those who didn’t,” writes O’Kelly in Sauna. “But who goes to the sauna four to seven times a week…apart from the Finns?”
Saunas have long been a site of purification — both sacred and functional, a de facto hospital in rural Finland: “It was the place of birth and the place where [dead] bodies were washed,” says Dr. Seesmeri. “The importance of the sauna has [since] become more spiritual,” due to modernization and the emergence of hospitals across the country.
“Sauna bathing is preserved by sauna bathing. It does not need to be protected. It’s so ingrained in culture.”
Mary Holland is a South African writer based in New York. She is Monocle magazine’s New York correspondent and has written for publications such as WSJ. Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, and the Financial Times and HTSI.
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