The Sauna Nations: Why Scandinavia Lives to Sweat

There are approximately 3.3 million saunas in Finland. There are 5.5 million Finns. That ratio — one sauna for every 1.7 people — tells you almost everything you need to know about the role of heat bathing in Finnish life.

But Finland is not alone. Across Scandinavia and the broader Nordic region, sauna is not a luxury activity or a weekend treat. It is a fundamental part of daily life, social culture, and national identity. To understand why, you need to go back a very long time.

Finland: Where Sauna Began

The Finnish sauna tradition is at least two thousand years old, possibly older. The earliest Finnish saunas were smoke saunas — savusaunas — dug into hillsides, with no chimney. A fire would burn for several hours, filling the room with heat and smoke. Once the fire died and the smoke cleared, the room would hold its warmth for hours.

The savusauna was everything. It was where families bathed. Where women gave birth. Where the sick were brought to recover. Where the dead were washed and prepared. Where decisions were made and stories were told. The Finnish proverb captures it precisely: "The sauna is the poor man's pharmacy."

This is not just metaphor. Before modern medicine arrived in rural Finland, the heat and steam of the sauna were genuinely medicinal — killing bacteria on wounds, easing fevers, aiding recovery from illness. The sauna was the cleanest, warmest room most Finnish families had.

In 2020, UNESCO added Finnish sauna culture to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This was not a surprise to anyone who had spent time in Finland.

The Finnish Sauna Ritual

A proper Finnish sauna session follows a rhythm that has barely changed in centuries.

You heat the sauna — ideally to between 80°C and 100°C. You sit on the wooden benches, feeling the dry heat open your pores. Then comes the löyly — you ladle water over the kiuas (sauna stove), sending a wave of steam through the room. The temperature feels like it jumps twenty degrees.

Between rounds, you cool down. In summer, this means jumping into a lake or the sea. In winter, it means rolling in snow or lowering yourself through a hole in the ice. Then you come back. Then you go again.

The whole ritual takes two to three hours. You sweat out the week. You talk about things that matter. Or you sit in companionable silence. Both are equally acceptable.

Norway: The Floating Sauna Revolution

Norway came to sauna culture a little later than Finland, but has made up for lost time with breathtaking creativity. The defining innovation has been the floating sauna — wood-fired saunas built on pontoons or barges, moored in city harbours and coastal waters, with the sea or fjord as the cold plunge.