Finnish saunas are having a moment in Wisconsin

The United States has seen an explosion of interest in saunas as social media creators tout the health benefits and new “sauna-preneurs” enter the scene to meet the growing demand. And nowhere is the trend more pronounced than in places like Minnesota, the Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin.

“If you want authentic sauna, it’s a great time to be in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest,” said author Michael Nordskog, who wrote a book about the history of sauna culture in the region called “The Opposite of Cold: The Northwoods Finnish Sauna Tradition.”

For National Sauna Week, which started Sunday and runs through Saturday, WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” set off to the Driftless Area to see Nordskog’s outdoor sauna and learn more about what sauna means to Wisconsinites carrying the tradition forward today. 

Saunas have a long history in northern Wisconsin, where Finnish immigrants started arriving in the 1890s and brought with them this unique bathhouse practice — and the word itself. Nordskog told “Wisconsin Today” that “sauna” is the only Finnish word that has become commonly used in the English language.

Nordskog said there’s a legend that Finnish homesteaders would first build a sauna on their property before anything else.

“It really bears out as true — not because their No. 1 priority was to have a sauna, but it’s a small building with a hearth that you could be living in while you’re building your house,” he said.

The basic ingredients of a Finnish sauna are heat and steam alternated with cold. The heat comes from a wood-burning stove with stones piled on top, and the steam is created by pouring water on the rocks. At full temperature, saunas can run from 160 to more than 230 degrees Fahrenheit. As for the cold part, that can involve stepping outside into the frigid air if it’s wintertime, or jumping into a pool or lake.

With its cold winters and lakeside culture, Wisconsin is a perfect place for this kind of sauna tradition to take hold — and Nordskog said the state is now enjoying a renaissance.

“Saunas are very common in the Upper Midwest, especially in the northern tier of Wisconsin,” he said. “I like to talk about it as being one of those cultural features that survived the melting pot. … It’s a natural fit for us here.”

Visiting a home sauna in Wisconsin

While Nordskog’s family roots are mostly Norwegian rather than Finnish, he was introduced to sauna early in life. Growing up, his family had a cabin in northern Minnesota where sauna was part of the vacation experience. 

Now, he has an outdoor sauna building in the backyard of his family home in La Farge in southwestern Wisconsin. He and his wife, Genie, take a weekly sauna together.

Over the years, Nordskog has become something of a sauna evangelist. He said doing a weekly sauna has been helpful for several chronic health conditions. And it “destroys stress,” he added, especially during the winter months when seasonal affective disorder can set in.

Nordskog said for him, one of the most important things about sauna is the opportunity to sweat.

“I think we’re conditioned in our lifestyle to not sweat, to not want to sweat,” he said. “But it’s a fundamental human function to sweat. … And so I love that you get to flex that organ, so to speak. And in the winter, it’s so good for your skin.”

Preparing for and spending time in the sauna is also an invitation to slow down.

“It’s building a fire rather than throwing a switch. It takes longer to do,” he said. “But then you have the roar of the fire. You have the flickering firelight. You have the smell of smoke. It’s meditative.”

Listen: “Wisconsin Today” visits Michael and Genie Nordskog’s backyard sauna

While sitting in his sauna, Nordskog explained the concept of löyly, the Finnish word for the steam that comes off the hot rocks after you pour water on them. 

“This word ‘löyly’ has a spiritual component to it. It’s like a presence, right? And you feel that — just all of that humidity coming off the rocks and enveloping you. I mean, it really is a hug,” he said.

Genie Nordskog has caught her husband’s sauna fever. She has fond memories of using the sauna at the family cabin to bathe their kids during vacation since there was no running water on the property. After warming up some water, scrubbing up and rinsing off, they could enjoy a relaxing moment soaking in the heat.

“We like to refer to it as slow hygiene,” she said. “It’s part and parcel of a trend in my life toward slowing down, really savoring the moment, finding the beauty and the ritual in really basic human needs.”

Genie Nordskog said it took her a while to warm up to the idea of the second part of the ritual: the cold plunge. She believes sauna is all about taking things at your own pace.

Now, she loves the feeling she gets stepping into the icy water after being in the 180-degree heat of the sauna.

“[The cold plunge] almost seems to create a protective shield around you. You’ve still got that warm core, but on the outside, nothing can touch you, not even the cold air,” she said. “I’ve taken to throwing my arms up in the air and just summoning it. You know, bring it on.”

Finnish sauna tradition lives on

Arnold Alanen is a professor emeritus of landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he researched the history of sauna structures.

Alanen told “Wisconsin Today” that as a Finnish American, sauna has been a way of life for him from the beginning. He said he was first brought into a sauna as a very young baby, and then he caught on to the ritual when he was about 8 years old, living on his grandparents’ farm in Minnesota.

“The weekly sauna tradition was something that we did on our farm, just without interruption. We would do it every Saturday evening,” he said. “It became such an integral part of my life, as well as of our family.”

These days, Alanen lives in Madison and has an indoor sauna in his basement. He said he doesn’t sauna “religiously” anymore, but he’s glad it’s always an option. He feels it connects him to his Finnish ancestry.

“In a cold climate like [Finland], it must have really been quite amazing — to get that warm and then go out into the cold and get the idea of the difference between the two,” Alanen said. “It’s just evolved over time as being such a ritual among Finns and Finnish Americans, too. We just don’t take it for granted.”

Getting started with sauna in Wisconsin

For people in Wisconsin wanting to “take the plunge” and give Finnish sauna a try, there are several options around the state. Superior Saunas in Ashland sells a variety of custom home saunas, modular kits and accessories for building your own. Soulful Saunas in Viroqua offers custom builds and mobile sauna rentals.

For those not seeking a backyard or at-home sauna, public saunas like Unwind in Woodruff, Northern Lights Sauna in Wausau and Hot Spell Sauna in Milwaukee offer drop-in sessions. And for the sauna traditionalists, Palmquist Farm in Brantwood maintains a savusauna, an old-fashioned smoke sauna house without a chimney.

To learn more, a lineup of free virtual events is available during National Sauna Week, which runs through Feb. 22.

Photo tour of Nordskogs’ sauna