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TRADITIONS AND OLD BELIEFS

The sauna is an ancient custom and almost a sacred place (particularly for the Finns). Tradition related to Finnish sauna is rich and diversified. It was not a place just for sweat bathing. It is associated with the peoples’ lives in all their stages. Traditionally, Finnish women gave birth in sauna. Folk healers were curing the patients in the sauna. Furthermore, it was the place where the bodies of the dead were washed and prepared for their final journey.

Place for a magic

Sauna was also a place where magic was performed and casting love spells could also happen there. It was often performed on young women to improve their marriage ability, with special sauna bath: birch whisks hanging, special herbs aroma in the air and the love spells of the magician woman. Sauna had an important role in “healing” of love affairs through magic.

Old beliefs and customs

Gnome

It was believed that little sauna elf, called gnome lived in a sauna. He was treated with respect, because he might cause troubles for people and “punish” them if acting “immorally” in the sauna. As sauna was the place where gnome was living, people used to warm up the sauna occasionally just for him. Another customary was to leave some food outside the sauna for that little elf. 

 Christmas sauna

There is an old custom referring to Christmas and sauna, which represents the old tradition of many Finnish peasant families. They started heating sauna two days before Christmas so everybody could take sauna bathing before the sun set at Christmas Eve. Why?  There are two different versions of the tale… In the first one, once the darkness set in, the sauna is used by the invisible folks who are previous inhabitants of the house. Others believed that the invisible visitors were sauna elfs who brought a good fortune to the house.

New Year

“In Koivisto on the Karelian Isthmus, the New Year’s Eve sauna was heated very early in the morning before the dawn. The saying went that ‘work would get done in time all year as long as the smoke from the sauna rose up into the sky before the sun on New Year’s morning’.”

(“Sauna – A Finnish national institution”, Erkki Helamaa, architect, Professor emeritus and Juha Pentikäinen, Professor, University of Helsinki)

Different functions of sauna in the past

In Finland, in the old times, sauna was not used just for bathing, but also as a place for diverse agricultural and domestic activities. Thus, in sauna flax was dried, meat was cured, sausages were smoked, a melt was prepared and a laundry has been washed.

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