Saunas, in many forms, have been culturally tied to civilizations for at least 10,000 years. Independent of each other, different people of the world found their own ways to get sweaty. Each version of the sauna throughout history is either mildly or massively different than the saunas we use today. The modern sauna evolved from the best traits of history’s many saunas. Learning the history and evolution of saunas isn’t only a fun lesson in cultural differences and preferences. Understanding the saunas of yesterday gives a better insight into why today’s saunas act and perform the way they do.
When reading about the many versions of saunas that have popped up throughout history, think about what is common among them and what previous sauna achievements may have inspired the next. This history will feature saunas in their many forms as close to the order believed to have happened by the archaeological and anthropological international community.
Table of Contents
History of the Word “Sauna”
First, why do we call saunas “saunas”? Many of you likely already know that sauna is a Finnish word for their distinct style of the hot house, but bonus points for those who know what the word truly means! Sauna (pronounced SAUW-nah, like a sow saying “nah”) just means bathhouse. But interestingly, sauna has become an international shorthand for several bathhouses, even those that aren’t from Finnish origins. Further, the word “sauna” has been adapted wholesale into several other languages, from French (identical spelling) to Japanese, where it is one of only a handful of Finnish phonetic loan words in the language. But interestingly enough, the Japanese language actually has another word for their own domestic traditional public bathhouses (sentou).
Today, the word sauna no longer has to strictly refer to Finnish-style saunas and instead can generally reference just about any kind of bathhouse. In this article, we will be talking about several bathhouses that aren’t Finnish in origin but still call them saunas.
The First Saunas Across the World
This section will explain the several “firsts” in saunas across the world. Of the several bathhouses that sprung up throughout history, the modern saunas owe just about all of their best traits to these trailblazers.
History’s First Sauna
Archaeologists have found evidence of saunas in Africa that even predate the earliest Finnish examples. While no community has meaningfully determined the earliest use of these saunas, the anthropological records of their use date back at least to 9,000 B.C.E. These original saunas are thought to have been medicinally used by the people who built them. These saunas were built underground in a way that is still used today for more classic boilers. Someone would dig a hole wide enough for a person to sit in and make a fire at the bottom of the hole. Once the fire burned down to embers, a platform with ventilation holes was placed over the smoking hole, and the person needing healing would sit in the hole.
Readers may be surprised to learn that history’s first saunas were for one bather at a time. Being that today’s solo sauna, the infrared sauna, is seen as a modern twist on the sauna formula, it is gratifying to learn that solitary soaking has a longer history than communal soaking is its modern definition!
The First Finnish Sauna and Beyond
There is evidence of Finnish saunas from as early as 7000 B.C.E., but they may not be the saunas you are thinking of. In these early days, living in Scandinavia was no easier than it is today. It gets cold in the winter, and you couldn’t just crank the heat before radiators were invented. The first Finnish saunas are actually functionally similar to the African saunas from the previous example. Those early Finns would dig holes into their houses or whatever lodging they could find and use the same fire system that people in Africa tried years before. But instead of using them for medicinal reasons, early Finns used saunas for survival.
The first true Finnish saunas made of wood with a wood-burning mechanism with the intention of being permanent are from about 50 B.C.E. And these are the saunas you’re probably thinking of. These are the traditional wood-burning saunas that are still built today and are a big piece of the modern sauna blueprint. These saunas use a wood stove that pipes heat into a room where sauna goers can relax in the heat. These early saunas also started the practice of spreading stones on top of the wood stove so that bathers could splash water on the stove and have it all turn into steam quickly. The steam raises the humidity in the room and makes the dry heat of the sauna a bit more bearable.
We can’t talk about Finnish saunas without mentioning how central they are to all of Finnish culture. Children were born in saunas throughout early history, most houses in Finland now have their own saunas, and the house of Finnish Parliament even has a sauna. Saunas were once a means of survival in Finland, but they have since become a way of life closely tied to health and relaxation. It’s no wonder why Finland is regularly one of the happiest countries on Earth!
Greek Bathhouses
While the architecture of Finnish saunas is still used today, the other major sauna in history that is used as an architectural example is the Greek and later Roman bathhouses. Starting in early Greek civilization and later adapted by the Romans, the bathhouses of these two civilizations were meeting points and central gatherings, very much so in the spirit of Finnish saunas. But while Finnish saunas are traditionally quite small, they are so small usually to help hold in heat; Greek and Roman bathhouses are sprawling and multipurpose.
Regularly the subject of painters in both Greek and Roman culture, bathhouses in this area was made to include multiple pools and lounge areas and could accommodate people by the thousand in most metropolitan examples. While some rooms were dedicated to heated areas like a Finnish sauna, Greek and Roman bathhouses usually used steam as heat, making them one of history’s first (debatably compared to our next entry) steam rooms. Roman and Greek baths incorporated a multi-step detox system fairly similar to modern spas in which people would bathe for cleanliness, use the sauna, and then take a final soak to cool down.
Turkish Hammam
Unlike the Greek and Roman bathhouses, which evolved into modern spas, the Turkish Hammam is alive and well across the world. Sprouting up in Turkey around the same time as Ancient Greek baths, Hammam is the name for the entire traditional detox experience taken on by Turks and those lucky enough to have a local Hammam. Hammam is a sequence of detox practices that includes a sauna step, usually surrounded by massages and scrubbings. But the actual sauna in Turkish Hammam is once again a steam room heated by a central boiler. Very old examples of Turkish steam boilers actually heated from the sand, similar to Turkish-style coffee but on a bigger scale. But these traditional boilers have, of course, been replaced by electric versions of the same formula. Hammam spread throughout the Middle East and eventually crossed borders with the Ancient Greek and Roman baths in Southern Europe. Their mixing has led to the rich bathhouse culture in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and their neighbors today. While the most traditional baths in these regions may keep to their most traditional practices, Greek architectural practices came to influence the Turks, and Turkish cleaning methods became more common in Greece and Italy.
Aboriginal Sweat Lodges
Here’s something interesting: sweat lodges of similar form and function were built by Australian Aboriginals, New Zealand Maori, and North/South American Indigenous Peoples, all seemingly independent of each other. While, of course, the Mawali and Aussie Aboriginals had ample cultural exchange, it is fascinating that sweat lodges are also a staple of several North American Indigenous Nations; examples span from the Navajo and Squamish all the way to the ancient Inca.
Sweat lodges are usually clay or packed dirt domes no bigger than 15 square meters. Inside, there is usually a central fire which has a pad of rocks over the top (sound familiar?). The enclosed space usually has a small hole in the roof to let out excess heat and steam.
Among almost all cultures who used them, sweat lodges are more than medicinal and more than communal. In most cases, sweat lodges were associated with higher thinking and even spiritualism. Where the Finnish saw sauna-found clarity as a connection with their health, Indigenous people across the world saw them as a connection with a higher power.
Korean Jjimjilbang
Anyone who has tried a Korean spa likely knows that their saunas are a bit different. Not quite a steam room and not quite a wood-burning sauna, what exactly is a Jjimjilbang? The Jjimjilbang first showed up in Korea about 500 years ago. At that time, the hot rooms in Jjimjilbang were heated by kiln heaters fed similarly to Finnish saunas, but they were usually in the same room or area as hot tubs. This, in effect, creates a unique hybrid sauna experience that both has the dry heat of wood-burning saunas and the high humidity of steam rooms. And similar to Hammam, Jjimjilbangs are more than just saunas but instead an entire spa and cleaning experience separated by sex. The kiln-heated rooms in Jjimjilbang are usually the last step in the spa experience and directly follow a process of skin cleaning that includes intense scrubbing and wiping by Jjimjilbang staff to get the dead skin cells off you. Stepping into the hybrid heat of a jjimjilbang after such a major exfoliation can be a genuinely sublime feeling.
The Evolution of Saunas
You may notice that today’s saunas are functionally a celebration of the many saunas which came before them. With those key traits as a base, modern engineers and inventors made these major changes that brought about the saunas we see today.
The Creation of Electric Saunas
The first electric sauna came about in 1893 and was proudly displayed by its inverter John Harvey Kellogg at the Chicago World’s Fair, which at that time was both the central city and central festival for major inventions. Kellogg’s sauna, however, was more than simply an electric boiler which the Turks had been using in Hammam for decades at that point. This is actually the first example of an infrared sauna. Kellogg’s sauna used large heat-conductive light bulbs to heat a subject without having to heat an entire room. At the time Kellogg created his sauna, it was inconceivable to mass produce or even market. Further, even Kellogg himself, a sauna therapy advocate, didn’t know the full extent of saunas’ potential as health cures.
The Creation of Electric Steam Rooms
While saunas had been long thought impossible without the burning of wood, steam rooms never had quite the same growing pains. With the first electric boiler quickly came the first electric steam room. While early examples are indeed in Turkey proper, the Western world took a bigger interest in steam rooms after their introduction at the Russian and Turkish Baths in 1892 in the East Village of New York City. This facility, which is still running today, was one of the first to ever use an electric boiler in their steam room.
Saunas as Healing
While several cultures from as early as the first African civilizations knew that saunas had healing qualities, the modern medical community rightly spent several decades proving those health benefits. Upon finding those benefits, doctors have been increasingly recommending sauna therapy to patients giving history a wonderful little loop. Sauna therapy has been a common medical practice in Finland for centuries, but mainland Europe and North America have only taken to the process during the past 100 years.
And more than 60 years after Kellogg first showed off the potential of infrared saunas, they remained largely unexplored. That is until NASA started to take an interest in the wavelengths given off by bulbs similar to those Kellogg used in his first infrared sauna. Following this, NASA published some of the first research showing that bathing in infrared light that produces heat can have some stunning health benefits. Doctors soon started adapting the research into real-life tests with ceramic infrared saunas around 1965. It would take another decade before infrared saunas became available to the average European or North American.
The merits of sauna therapy are now well-explored, and the more doctors and scientists test, the more we learn that the intuition and guidance of cultures even 10,000 years in the past were more in tune with the body’s needs than we may be today. Europe and North America are quickly taking up sauna use for health benefits; infrared saunas saw a big boost of interest during the COVID-19 pandemic when public saunas were more difficult to reach.
The Modern Sauna
The saunas that we use today owe one or more of their traits to the saunas that came before them throughout history, but what do our saunas have today that history’s saunas didn’t? The most major achievement in modern saunas is the overhaul of the traditional wood-burning sauna from Finland. For thousands of years, Finnish saunas depended on burning wood to keep their heat up, but thanks to modern electrical and technological advances, many saunas in today’s spas and public bathhouses no longer have to burn wood by the forest-full. Some use a fully electric heater but still have space for sauna users to create steam. Others are experimenting with building bigger and more communal infrared saunas. But the problem with larger infrared saunas is that the more space infrared radiation has to spread out in the atmosphere, the more bulbs and strength you’ll require just to keep your subjects hot. The point is the modern sauna is functionally still a work in progress. As engineers adopt more ways to be energy efficient, saunas will continue to grow in toe.
Conclusion on the History and Evolution of Saunas
Like any other beloved cultural touchstone, saunas have survived thousands of years of cultural change and, instead of being left behind, have grown with the sensibilities and needs of sauna users. And as the world’s cultures continue to share and spread ideas, so does the strength of the modern sauna. The sauna you use today owes its form and strength to the Finish just as well as Africans, Aboriginals, Turks, and countless Indigenous nations. To enjoy a sauna today is to enjoy the culmination of history and to bathe alongside thousands of years-worth of sauna goers. While saunas are already the joining center for so many communities, it is beautiful to know they are also the joining of so many cultures and peoples.