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For the Finns the sauna has always been important. It has a long history in Finland, going back at least a thousand years. There are today an estimated 1,5 million saunas in Finland, which is rather a lot for a population of 5 million.
Originally the sauna was a place to bathe, but as it was the only available clean place with abundant water, it has also been a place for giving birth and healing the sick.
History has seen a variety of differents sauna types in Finland and other cultures have had their own versions of the sweat bath: the North American native Indian Inipi, the Russian bania and the Turkish steam bath. The nomad people wandering around in what later became Finland already heated holes in the ground and covered them with a tarp to have a warm place for bathing. Later the sauna became a dedicated part of the house or often a separate building slightly apart from the main habitat.
The smoke sauna is the most traditional form of the sauna. It has a fireplace with no chimney; the smoke exits through a small hole just below the roof. The fireplace is built by piling stones, without using mortar, and takes several hours to warm up. These were built and used as late as the 1920's, after which they almost disappeared as new types of stoves for sauna use were developed. Heaters now have a metal casing and a chimney, but still have stones to retain the heat. Saunas later got running water, and new building materials transformed the sauna into the kind of sauna we know today.
In many modern Finnish houses the sauna is a main part of the bathroom. The heater is electrical but other aspects of bathing in a sauna remain mainly unchanged. The inner walls of a sauna are always made of wood. Wood is the only natural material that does not feel too hot to the touch in high temperatures.
The feeling in a wood-heated sauna is somewhat different from that of an electric sauna. The wooden sauna has lately won new appreciation and the art of building wood-heated saunas, even smoke saunas has been revived.
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