The Nordic countries believe that having saunas is essential for physical and emotional wellbeing. Clare Dowdy explores saunas past and present to find out why.
, there's now a renewed enthusiasm – even evangelical fanaticism – for the perfect counterpart to an icy outdoor dip, the hot, sweaty sauna. Across the Nordic region and beyond,, and existing saunas are overrun with visitors. And they're even making it on to the big screen.
However, in bygone centuries, their role went far beyond creating a sense of well-being and a place to relax. As well as a place to wash, they were used for cooking, drying flax and rye, making soap, doing the laundry, tending to the sick, washing the dead before burial, and giving birth, explains Lamminmäki.
"Sauna in Finland was an important part of folk healing," Lamminmäki says,"It was sterile, warm and private, and people believed that it was 'loaded' with the power of ancestors and deities. Sauna was not just a building, it was liminal place and space between this world and the other world." However, the benefits of sauna have not always been appreciated."In 1890 in Finland, folk healing was declared illegal, and speaking of spiritual or supernatural sauna practices became taboo," O'Kelly writes,"Wisdom was passed on in secret, through word of mouth by elderly female bathers, guardians of the healing sauna.
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