It took many dips, soaks and steams to research Social Sauna: Culture of Bathe-ing. The aim? To lay out the essentials of sauna as a deeply social practice, tracking the culture around it from ancient global traditions to current experimentation. Authors Jane Withers and Ria Hawthorn are your expert guides; the updated edition includes an afterword by Therme Group’s Robert Hammond. Find it online at William Stout Architectural Books and Rizzoli (more retailers are coming soon). So you can dip in gently, we’re sharing five things to learn from Social Sauna: Culture of Bathe-ing below.
Coming to our sauna festival Culture of Bathe-ing (Feb 12 - Mar 1, at NYC’s Domino Park)? Of course you are. Put a wallet somewhere in your bathing suit so you can buy the book there direct. We’re happy to share that subscribers get 20% off the ticket price with discount code: COBVIP20. BOOK HERE.
Scroll on to see the fruits of our Culture of Bathe-ing poster campaign. We asked our creative friends to help spread the word about our sauna festival, and the responses were a mix of funny, brilliant, thoughtful and oddball. Enjoy.
Social Sauna by Jane Withers
Löyly describes both steam and spirit
There’s a lot of heat around bathing tourism at the moment, but actually it’s nothing new. The Finns’ love of sauna has been a subject of (usually voyeuristic) interest to foreign visitors for centuries.
“Men and women use the bath promiscuously, without any concealment of dress, or being in the least influenced by any emotions of attachment,” wrote Italian explorer Guiseppe Acerbi in his Travels through Sweden, Finland and Lapland to the North Cape. “I often amused myself with surprising the bathers in this manner.” No wonder the bathers look startled in Acerbi’s illustration Bain Finlandais (1802).
But what I love about this image is how Acerbi depicts the dense clouds of steam, giving them as much physicality and personality as the people. Intentionally or not, Acerbi tunes into the dual meaning of löyly to describe the actual steam and evoke the spirit or soul of sauna.
Cave saunas are an ancient Japanese and Korean tradition
We’re all familiar with Japan’s revered onsen tradition that grew out of the country’s thermal geology and wealth of hot springs, but what about their ancient sweat rituals?
The ishiburo is the oldest type of cave sauna common in the area around the Seto Inland Sea. The cave is heated overnight by a fire of green pine and rice straw, then the embers are cleared out and the floor is covered with seaweed and medicinal plants such as Japanese mugwort and sweet flag. Straw mats are used to cover the plants and entrance. In the morning, the temperature is around 100°C, cooling to around 90°C in the afternoon when villagers gather to bathe and chat. Korea’s traditional form of sweat bathing, hanjeungmak, takes place in clay-lined kilns used for charcoal making.
Forest materials amplify our emotional experience
In our world of steel, concrete, glass and cyber waves, much of the appeal of the sauna lies in the elemental experience. The feel and scent of raw materials drawn directly from the surrounding forest and suffused in steam. Much like regionalism in food, sourcing local wood species specific to time and place amplifies the emotional texture of bathing (forget those thin slices of industrial timbers, they’re the equivalent of processed ham).
Interestingly, forest medicine expert Dr Qing Li has found that it is the scent of a forest and specifically the oils emitted by trees, that has the most beneficial effect on forest bathers.
Sauna maestro Alvar Aalto made his designs symbolic
For humanist architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976), as for many Finns, the sauna was more than simply a bath. It was a ritual space where the physical and spiritual come together. Aalto considered the sauna a Finnish national monument and designed around 30 saunas for public, private and institutional use. The most exquisite has to be the sauna at Villa Mairea (1938-39): a small but symbolically charged space where Aalto brings together references as varied as Modernist architecture and painting, Finnish vernacular buildings, and Japanese and African influences. Check out those unusual details.
Floating saunas are a playground for bold forms
One current trend we are enjoying is the rise of floating saunas in cities and beyond. Oslo’s waterfront leads the way (see below for our upcoming talk). Once a gritty, industrial stretch of the city, it is now home to one of the most vibrant, community-driven bathing cultures in the world, with (at the last count) more than 15 floating saunas dotted along the former docks, many of them run by the non-profit Oslo Badstuforening (bathing association).
And the experimental format is being taken up in North America too. Sisu & Löyly in Grand Marais, Minnesota, has a form reminiscent of Viking architecture built on the hull of a boat.
And a last word on the future…
Since the first edition of Social Sauna came out just a few years ago, the bathing movement has exploded. And like any living culture, it keeps changing shape. In the final chapter we look to new interpretations of the bathhouse — a vibrant place for defining community and well-being of course, but also a space for rekindling joy in our lives, hosting performance, poetry and music. We can’t wait to see what comes next.
Jane Withers is editor of the Culture of Bathe-ing Substack and co-author of Social Sauna: Culture of Bathe-ing (published by Therme Group, $35.50). Distributed by IDEA Books.
Culture of Bathe-ing posters roll in
What better way to spread the word about Culture of Bathe-ing, than to ask our brilliant community of bathing friends. They’ve responded with nearly 100 poster designs for our sauna fest (Feb 12 - Mar 1 at NYC’s Domino Park) since we sent out the word with help from Brooklyn artist Victor Jeffreys II.
“Everyone has a different take on what sauna culture is,” says Victor. “We’ve had paintings, prints, collages, sketches … our loose brief was a way of giving people space to be fully creative. You may see a little nudity in these posters (like mine) but please remember the event is not clothing optional!”
We’ll be sharing them on our Instagram, Notes, and we couldn’t resist adding more here too — scroll down to see them.
CoB Talk Feb 12: Community saunas come to the US
Here’s a bit of advice for anyone wanting to kickstart a community sauna scene as enviable as Oslo’s. “Just do it – and ask for permissions as you go,” says Ragna Marie Fjeld, general secretary of Oslo Badstuforening. “When locals start to use the sauna, it becomes obvious that it makes city life better, and harder for the municipalities to remove.”
She’ll be speaking at What can American Cities Learn from the European Nonprofit Sauna Movement? on February 12, a panel talk we’re hosting in honor of National Sauna Week at Scandinavia House. Also speaking: Emily Weidenhof, assistant commissioner of public realm at NYC DOT and Sweat author Mikkel Aaaland. The event is moderated by Therme Group’s Adam Bamba Tanaka. Tickets are free, you can register here.
News
Did you catch Eero Kilpi, chair of the North American Sauna Society, talking to CBS News this month? Here’s his view on sauna culture becoming part of the national conversation.
One last thing
Sharing more of our favorite Culture of Bathe-ing posters …
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my favorite sauna book :)