“There is at least one thing, which is done as always before: having a sauna bath every Saturday evening. It gives a feeling of safety and for adults wakens up nice memories.”

The sauna has survived cultural revolutions and retained its central position in the cultural heritage of Finland. This can be explained in two ways. Either the sauna’s heritage is so flexible that it has changed with cultural revolutions, or the sauna has kept its traditional value so desirable that its traditional model has managed to keep its position as an important way of taking a bath.

In this paper I explore the values that have been ascribed to the sauna both in oral tradition and in modern advertisements about the sauna. Do these two portrayals of the sauna convey the same values, and are they in favour of innovations or against them? And how have the innovations been justified: are they only new simulations of the ancient way of having a sauna bath, or do they invent a totally new bathing style?

I presume that both the traditional sauna and the modern sauna using new technology can live side by side. The sauna’s attraction is based on senses, emotions, and aesthetic experiences. Both the traditional and modern saunas can provide those elements for people.

In my analysis, I give special attention to the sauna’s exceptional aesthetics, where the past, present, and future meet in sauna bathers’ sensitive awareness. Sometimes only a detail or a reminder of the traditional sauna is needed to satisfy sauna bathers’ yearning for nostalgic experiences.

“Is the sauna healthy? Nobody ever asked that. The whole question is rough. Are joy, happiness, and smiling healthy? To reach these, people have taken bigger risks than taking a sauna bath.”

(The quotes are from the oral tradition research material and I shall use them in this paper.)