Finland has over 3 million saunas offering steamy, invigorating and stress-relieving treatments that not only numb the skin but also help people explore human nature.
As Alexander Lembke shows me around Finland’s oldest public sauna, he tells me I won’t be surprised if older sauna-goers ask me to rub their backs. “Just do it and help them. It shows how deeply ingrained sauna is in society,” says Lembke, a self-proclaimed “sauna classic” who usually heats up naked at Tampere’s Rajaportti sauna (opening at 7 a.m. for seven hours). Today, though, with the customers in mind, he’s wearing swim trunks and flip-flops, and his body is adorned with numerous nautical-themed tattoos.
I came to Finland to experience sauna culture. Sauna culture is a revered tradition that was inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. My starting point is Tampere, an hour and a half train ride north of Helsinki, a city of about 250,000 people known as the “sauna capital of the world” for its roughly 60 public saunas.
While saunas are often touted as an expensive luxury in other countries, in Finland they are a more everyday activity. Many people have a sauna at home; many older Finns were even born in a sauna. But the sauna is also considered a sacred place where one can find connection and peace. Finland has ranked first in the world happiness index for the past six years. Does this have anything to do with sauna culture?
Built in 1906, Rajaportti is unique without being over the top. Around 15 minutes before opening, a line forms at the entrance, and at 2pm, people emerge from the ticket booths and head to the men’s or women’s changing rooms. Soon, the sauna is filled with voices and the noise of the steam bath – the sauna is separated by a wall separating men and women (small children can squeeze through the gap).
But the sauna’s function is only one of the roles it plays in everyday life. From therapy rooms to bars, shelters, debate clubs and daycares, it’s a place where people of all ages come together to socialise. If older people aren’t in the sauna at their usual time, they greet each other while younger children play on the bath floor.
Some people come to the sauna straight after work to wash away the stress of the day on their way home, while others spend hours there drinking with friends. The sauna can also help you feel less alone in your thoughts. One regular told Lemke that he came to the sauna to “share his melancholy.”
While some saunas have rules about what can be talked about (politics, business, and religion are discouraged, for example), at Rajapoti, anything goes. “There were leftists, there were rightists, there were punks, there were architects, there were artists; everyone was there. They were talking, they were drinking. Of course, sometimes it got hot,” Lemke said. “That’s how it should be.”
I’m the Guardian’s Nordic correspondent based in Stockholm, and half of my extended family is from Sweden, where people enjoy a bada bastu (Swedish for “steam sauna”), so this was not my first sauna experience. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of summer evenings spent in a sauna and the salty waters of the Stockholm archipelago. On a recent trip to Iceland, I went to a sauna in a caravan on the night of a women’s strike, and every 15 minutes we were invited to swim in the North Atlantic. When the feminists started singing, the people in the caravan spontaneously started singing too. But not only does Finland have a lot of saunas (an estimated 3.3 million out of a population of 5.6 million), its sauna culture is also unique. The sauna was originally invented to meet practical needs for heating and hygiene, but today it has a much deeper meaning in Finnish society, perhaps even to human nature itself.
At the heart of it all is the word “löyly” (pronounced lo-loo), which literally means steam or heat. But that doesn’t even begin to describe the situation. Lembke likens the feeling of good löyly to a warm hug. “It’s a spiritual thing,” he said. Every sauna has its own löyly, and the quality of the löyly in the same sauna can vary from day to day or even hour to hour as the temperature drops. “If I have guests in the sauna, they become my harshest critics, and if the löyly isn’t very good, they get a little upset.”
It wasn’t until I entered the sauna that I began to understand the concept of löyli. After washing myself with buckets of water from the sinks on the ground floor, I walked up the stairs to the top floor, where the temperature was about 80 degrees Celsius. While my neighbor poured water on the stones, I began to taste the löyli. The taste was aromatic and slightly bitter, a bit like green tea, smelling of birch. But the intensity of the “hug” was so strong that I found it hard to resist, and after a few minutes I had to leave. This was the best part: I put on my acorn-shaped sauna cap, towel, and flip-flops, looked at the snow, and felt the cold rain on my skin. My skin tingled, my chest and temples throbbed slightly, and I was completely absorbed in the moment.
“We spend the night with our families, so it’s a nice way to start the weekend,” said Anita Kontukoski, 49, a social worker, chatting with a friend on an outdoor bench. She has an electric sauna at home, but with electricity prices high lately, it’s more convenient to come here. On Fridays, she usually comes straight from work. “It’s a perfect way to start your free time and forget about the stress of the week.” Her friend Mia Surakka, 49, a nature photographer, uses the sauna at her summer house every day in the summer, and once a week in the winter. “Sauna is very important for Finns; most people can’t live without it.”
Nearby, a group of men gathered around a picnic table, wrapped in towels, drinking beer. They were all teachers. They usually use the sauna at home, but also come from nearby Pori to experience Tampere’s sauna culture. They love the opportunity to socialize with each other, and they also love to talk to strangers. “No politics, no religion, no sports, just life,” said one of them. “We talk about feelings and history, of course.” Is the sauna a unique place for Finnish men to talk about their emotions? “I think so – and with a little alcohol,” said Harri Nurmela, 55, pointing to the can in front of him (which was, in fact, 0% alcohol).
As we drove through town and arrived at the Rauhaniemi Folk Spa, the sky was already darkening, and a line of people fearlessly poured out of the sauna into the nearby 3-degree Celsius lake. At first it seemed unthinkable, but once I was in and out of the sauna, following them became a matter of course – until I lost my bearings and started screaming. But then I felt inspired and ready to try again.
The visitors are relatively young and the sauna is gender neutral, so wearing swimsuits is a must. Maiju, Paula and Milja, aged 39 to 42, came to Tampere from Helsinki with their colleagues for the weekend.
They say that the sauna is a place where you don’t have to worry about your appearance, where everyone is equal and there are no differences in status. Also, while in other countries pregnant women are often advised to avoid saunas, in Finland visiting a sauna is considered a normal activity during pregnancy and is practiced even with small children.
“Especially when we’re about to give birth,” says Paula, 40, a product manager. “Sauna, sex and cleansing are the things you should do before you give birth,” she said, drawing knowing chuckles from the room. Her youngest son, 2, is “a big fan of the sauna,” she said. “He’d sit in the sauna with us for a long time. At least 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the temperature of the sauna.”
According to Tuomas Paloniemi from Tampere Tourism, the history of Tampere’s public saunas goes back to the early 19th century, when the city was an industrial centre and the working class needed public bathing facilities. “They needed to wash themselves, and bathhouses and private saunas were not common in homes at the time.” By around 1820, there were more than 100 public saunas in the city, he says.
The Finnish sauna tradition is thought to date back to the first settlements after the Ice Age, when people dug holes in the ground and lined them with animal skins. During the Iron Age, saunas are thought to have been built from logs, giving rise to the chimneyless smoke sauna, which remained popular until the 1930s, when continuously heated saunas and later electric saunas became popular. In the past, in addition to bathing, saunas were used for cooking, sewing, socialising, caring for the sick, preparing for funerals and childbirth. Traditional public saunas in cities almost disappeared in the 1950s, but have seen a revival in recent years.
“You could say that the popularity of saunas declined in the 70s or 80s, or even the 90s,” says Janne Koskenniemi, executive director of the Finnish Sauna Association. He attributes this to the proliferation of poor-quality apartment saunas (“You know it’s a bad sauna when you get a headache and your feet are cold”). But more and more public saunas are being built in apartments, and more and more new public saunas are being built. Some are aimed at tourists, he says, but young Finns are increasingly drawn to the physical relaxation and mental health benefits.
Koskenniemi says saunas definitely contribute to the well-being of Finns. He likened the effects of regular sauna use to therapy. “When you’re in a sauna, your body is naked, your mind is naked, your social status is naked. There’s only you.”
The association operates three smoke saunas in Helsinki, where they try to preserve the customs and culture of the original saunas and explore the potential of new technologies. Becoming a member is not easy, as hundreds of people are waiting in line, but I was invited to attend Ladies’ Night as a guest of board member Ritva Omeroluoma.
She was waiting for me in a terry robe, and we immediately undressed and washed up before heading to our third sauna of the day, this time a smoke sauna. The experience was wonderful. The smell in the sauna was incredible, completely different from the previous two saunas, and the heat was intense. As we discussed the UNESCO bid that she was leading, the dim light helped us forget that we were not in bathing suits. From the sauna, we walked along a long metal path through the rustling reeds and plunged into the black waves of the Baltic Sea (water temperature: 6 degrees Celsius). In the cafe, women sat by the fire, reading newspapers and eating sandwiches.
“We eat, we sleep, we go to the sauna, and it’s all the same to us,” Ohmeroluoma said. “We’ve been doing this for 8,000 years.” As a child, she would go to a public sauna with her family every Saturday. “My mother and grandmother would go to the women’s sauna, and I would go to the men’s sauna because I felt freer there. My grandmother would always say, ‘Don’t burn yourself with hot water. Don’t touch the kiua (sauna stoves)!’” When Ohmeroluoma had her own children, she began taking them to the sauna when they were less than a month old. “In Finland, the sauna is open to everyone,” she said.
That’s not to say there aren’t high-end options. Helsinki has SkySauna, a sauna located on a large wheel, and the Allas sea pool, which overlooks the harbour. Death metal fans should check out Bodom Bar & Sauna in Espoo.
But the most peaceful experience I felt was at my last stop, Sompasauna, a free sauna on the seafront in Helsinki that is open 24 hours a day, all year round. There are three saunas in the house, one of which has a small window overlooking the Baltic Sea. People kept arriving, and eventually there were about 20 of us left. I closed my eyes, listened to the strangers talking and the crackling of the fire, and realized that I was feeling the relaxing effects of the sauna.
Student Iida Korpela, 26, comes almost every day. “I don’t know of another place in Helsinki or Finland in general where there are so many different people – young, old, students, foreigners, people from different socioeconomic backgrounds,” she said, sitting at the piano under the woodshed. “When you’re in the sauna, you don’t have to wear nice clothes; we’re all just people in a sauna. That’s the best part.”