The sauna is usually considered a Finnish phenomenon. However, six centuries ago, the hot steam bath was still known throughout the entire coniferous zone of Eurasia. Nowadays, only Estonians, Russians and Turks have a living national sauna culture; elsewhere in Europe, national hot steam bathing cultures have died out.

During the last decades the sauna has begun to spread again to central Europe and even to Japan and the US, where it was previously unknown. For example, according to the International Sauna Society, whose headquarters is in Helsinki, there are more than 5 million people in Germany and more than 12 million people in Japan who take sauna baths regularly. So, in both countries, there are more bathers than in Finland, which has only 5 million inhabitants, almost all of which use the sauna weekly. While Finnish saunas serve as the model, saunas abroad are usually different from those in Finland. How did the Finnish sauna spread to other countries? There were three ways: firstly by the migration of people, secondly by exports of sauna buildings or equipment, and thirdly by mass media.

In other countries, saunas are mostly owned by sauna clubs or commercial companies, contrary to the private family saunas of Finland. Also, public saunas in other countries are usually intended for both sexes, also contrary to Finland. The owners abroad argue that, otherwise, their saunas would become places for sexual minorities. Finally, unlike in Finland, sauna bathing is strictly regulated in other countries, because the owners claim that only Finns understand how to use them properly, having learned to take sauna baths as children.

Although Estonians and Russians do not need regulations on how to behave in a sauna, strictly regulated bathing cultures abroad gave us an idea for a research project. In 1993 the Finnish Sauna Society in Helsinki and the Department of European Ethnology at Turku University carried out a nationwide survey, inquiring “how did I learn to take a sauna bath?” This question was the only one in the whole questionnaire, and respondents were given the opportunity to answer in their own words in Finnish or Swedish. We received 1040 responses about people’s adoption of sauna culture, and these results are summarised in this paper.

During the twentieth century, Finland became urbanized, industrialized, and modern­ized. When people moved from the countryside to cities or industrial communities to work in factories, they took their private saunas with them. But the sauna had to be modernized to fit in the new surroundings. This was done by Finnish architects and engineers.