In Between Worlds: A Brief History of the Sacred Space of the Sauna
The history of saunas in Finland and their counterparts around the world
The idea of transformation and cleansing through water has taken on many forms throughout our existence. From ritual bathing in the bathhouses of the Indus Valley to the caves in northern Finland, water has long been a tool of transformation.
In Finland, the practice of sauna bathing is a cultural and spiritual practice whose roots date as far back as 7,000 BC. This practice involves sitting on wooden benches in a dimly lit room, where hot water is thrown onto a pile of rocks, releasing steam into the air, allowing the room to reach temperatures in the upper nineties and even into triple digits.
For Finnish people, sauna culture is an everyday staple of their lives and culture. Across the country, which is comprised of roughly 5.5 million people, there are over 3 million saunas. That’s roughly one sauna for every 1.8 people.
Historically, sauna bathing was a communal practice where the local community would gather to take part in the cultural tradition and spend time together, often including entire families, groups of friends, and even small children, all taking part in the activity together.
They’ve also been used in a deeper and more spiritual text, being places for practices such as giving birth to the cleansing of the dead before burial.
In Finland, saunas are also usually paired with methods of thermal inversion, which can include cold plunges in a nearby lake, river, or the ocean. Other forms of inversion can include cold showers or even diving into the snow surrounding the sauna, an act known as snow bath or lumikylpy in Finnish.
As of 2023, 90 percent of Finnish people reported having practiced sauna bathing at least once a week, with many reporting they participated every single day. For many, the practice is therapeutic and cleansing, allowing individuals to take a break from their everyday lives and leave the world behind for a bit of time.
There is also a belief that the practice of sauna bathing may be a large part of the reason why Finnish people are statistically the happiest on Earth. According to the 2024 World Happiness Index, Finland is the happiest country in the world, a title that it has held for 7 straight years.
Although there are a number of studies and research behind why Finland is so happy, including social welfare, broader access to freedom, and low levels of inequality, there is much to indicate it also has to do with the Finnish connection to the natural world.
This, in many ways, includes their connection to water and saunas. In sauna culture, most people use these spaces to get away from everyday life, using water to cleanse themselves of the outside world, and immersing in a beloved cultural practice. This allows for lower levels of stress and higher levels of feelings of happiness, gratitude, and even creativity.
“If you want to be more creative, you need to consciously have these times of relaxation in your day,” Emma Seppälä, Ph.D., Yale lecturer and bestselling author of The Happiness Track and Sovereign, tells Business Finland. “For people living in Finland, that's what the forest offers, as, by the way, does the sauna. Finns’ anti-stress lifestyle is pro-innovation.”
In many ways, saunas represent the stripping away of troubles. It is even common to be nude in saunas, which allows for societal barriers highlighted through clothing, much like our Roman bathhouses, to be removed from the conversation.
This simplicity creates a place where humanity can exist at its most basic form and be free of any of the outside pressures or preconceptions that arise from the societal normalities or stresses of the world.
Saunas in Other Places: From Turkey to Russia to North America
In other places around the world, especially in northern and eastern Europe, saunas have become a part of culture and society. Similar to Finnish saunas, places such as Sweden and even Russia have their own renditions of sauna culture.
As mentioned during our bathhouses conversation, Turkish hammams are a part of Islamic culture, and in Russia, banyas are used as places that offer socialization and health benefits. Although distinct in their own ways, they offer a very similar concept to the saunas of Finland.
Even in Estonia, a close neighbor of Finland, smoke saunas or sauns have been around for thousands of years and are listed as part of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. The first known evidence of these versions shows they appear to have emerged around the 6th and 7th centuries in Estonia, around the same time as Finnish saunas. Sauns are a bit different, though, because they use smoked logs to create the heat inside the room, while still offering the same type of spiritual and physical transformation.
In North America, A parallel tradition to saunas has existed among Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.
The Sweat Lodge, which is characteristic of many indigenous tribes, such as the Lakota and Blackfoot cultures, is an incredibly spiritually important tradition for North American peoples. These Sweat Lodges are similar to a sauna, where rocks that water is poured over induce steam that acts as both spiritual and physical cleansing.
For many indigenous cultures, these locations offer a similar convergence with the divine and are used for celebrations, cultural traditions, naming days, and more. In some cases, sweat lodges play an important role in the vision quest, a sort of rite of passage ritual in various indigenous cultures.
The separate evolution of these two types of steam-based traditions speaks to a shared human understanding of nature and the process of water.
The Spirituality and Connection to Nature Through Saunas
As mentioned, these spaces, whether the sweat lodges of North America or the saunas of Finland, have a very important role to play in culture.
Saunas have been historically staples of a connection with the divine. As mentioned, these were locations where individuals would communicate with their ancestors, accessing the otherworldly force that comprised all living things, and existing in a sort of middle space between worlds.
In Finnish culture, the culture has historically worshipped the four elements, earth, fire, wind, and water. Saunas were a place to access all of these elements at one time, leading to a sort of collective convening with the divine forces of nature.
“It was a microcosm of the three levels of the universe: the upper realm, the sky world; the middle realm, the Earth; and the underworld of the dead,” writes Emma O’Kelley in her novel Sauna: The Power of Deep Heat. “All of its core symbolism replicated the cycles of growth, interconnection, and symbiosis, with the end goal of altered states, raised consciousness, and rejuvenation.”
At the heart of the Finnish sauna experience is the löyly, the spirit or soul of the sauna, induced by the steam generated from pouring water on the rocks.
The folklore roots of the löyly describe something much more conceptual, resembling a sort of manifestation of the soul or divine force. This connection led to an animism of the saunas, which included necessary traditions such as washing before entering and appreciating the löyly of the sauna.
In other places, such as the saunas of Estonia, similar forces or spirits are described in the historical folklore. At the heart of each of these stories, they all focus on the sauna’s ability to replenish, cleanse, and rejuvenate the spirit.
This is a common theme across our understanding of water. We view the substance and the transformation of water itself as a place where we find conceptual, divine, or existential connection. It’s almost as a way of convening with both our societal and religious concepts of the divine realm and earth, the pouring of water on earthly stones to create an encapsulating and magical substance in steam.
In another sense, the steam and heat induce cleansing of both the body and soul through this divine power. Similar to the bathhouses, this cleansing can be a way to relieve oneself of any negative attributions, allowing for a stronger peace of mind and positive mindset.
These two connections found in saunas are why they’ve remained a staple of human culture for thousands of years. Our roots and attributions to these places, regardless of their place in the world, have led us to continue to celebrate their existence and champion them for generations to come.
Next week, we will discuss the renewed love of sauna bathing and dive into the scientific basis behind steam and why these places can have profoundly positive effects on our mental and physical health.
Story of the Week: The Smoke Saunas of Estonia
For this week’s Story, I’m sharing one of the pieces I used to do some research for this article, which covers Estonia’s sauna culture.
This story by Hillary Millan in the BBC shares her experience traveling to different sauns in Estonia to understand the spiritual, cultural, and ancestral roots of these unique spaces.
The piece is a unique look at the cultural traditions through the lens of an outsider, and the ways this historical practice has been used by citizens of this part of the world as a remedy for aches and ailments, as well as mental anguish.
You can read the full story here.
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With love,
Keegan
