Travel

As a personal mandate I try and design my travel around visiting local public saunas whenever I can. There is something magical about experiencing my favourite passion in a foreign land, enjoying the sweet heat with strangers seated all around me.

In the travel section Saunaist will feature beautiful traditional and exotic public saunas from around the world and explore the regions they exist in as we seek to inspire you too, to add saunas to your next adventure.

Note: Although similar to Finnish sauna culture, we won't focus on the distinct sweat bathing cultures in countries like Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia as they are rooted in centuries old traditions of their own.

Unique sauna diasporas

At first glance, the spread of Finnish sauna culture around the world seems to be happening in a mélange of expressions. From integration into pre-existing public spa cultures more broadly to percolating interest as a derivative of the biohacking movement, driven at least in part by the search for a ying to cold plunging's yang. There are small pockets of population that have been infiltrated by the Finnish diaspora over the last century (eg. Upper Peninsula, Michigan) where saunas dispersion blots out the map if you chart it. Then there are regions where the local populace have adopted the Finnish sauna culture and imbued it with their own flavour (eg. Germany).

Some of the unique regions of the world where the sauna diaspora has laid down roots over the years include:

Berlin, Germany (we could pick from a number of German cities)
Upper Peninsula, Michigan, USA
Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
Oslo, Norway
All over the United Kingdom
Minnesota, USA
Quebec, Canada
Yamanashi, Japan (amongst many other Japanese hot spots)
Tallinn, Estonia

Stay tuned to this section as we explore these regions and more in search of a taste of what Finnish sauna culture looks like around the globe. Perhaps you too will be inspired to plan future travels to some of these sauna hot spots.