For the Finns the sauna has always been important. It has a long history in Finland, going back at least a thousand years. There are today an estimated 1,5 million saunas in Finland, which is quite a lot for a population of 5 million.
Originally, the sauna was a place to bathe, but as it was the only clean place with abundant water available, it has also been a place where the Finns have been brought into this world and healed.
In a Finnish sauna the heater brings the room temperature up to 80-100 C (about 175-210 F). Water is thrown on the stove and the evaporation gives further warmth. People taking a bath in the sauna are seated on wooden benches at the height of approximately 1.3 metres (4 ft), so that they could efficiently use the warmth of the upper parts of the room. The heat relaxes the bathers' muscles and the sweating cleans the body from inside. If possible, a cooling swim in a lake finishes the wonderful effect of a real sauna.
There are several different types of saunas. Already before settling down, the nomad people used a heated construction for bathing. Later on, the sauna became either a part of the house or often a separate building slightly apart from the main habitat.
The smoke sauna is the most traditional form of the sauna. It has a fireplace with no chimney; the smoke exits through a small hole just below the ceiling. These were built and used as late as the 1920's, after which they almost disappeared as new types of stoves for sauna use were developed. Heaters now got a metal casing and a chimney, the saunas got running water, and new building materials transformed the sauna into the kind of sauna we know today.
In many modern Finnish houses the sauna occupies the major part of the bathroom. The heater is electrical but other aspects of bathing in a sauna remain virtually unchanged. The inner walls of a sauna are always made of wood. Wood is the only material that does not feel too hot to touch in high temperatures.
The feeling in a wood-heated sauna is somewhat different from that of an electric sauna. The wooden sauna has lately won new appreciation and the art of building wood-heated saunas, even smoke saunas, has been revived.
www.hut.fi/~icankar/sauna/sauna_e.html
www.muurame.fi/saunakyla/saunak.htm
