Smoke saunas, which have been used for centuries by rural Estonians to treat physical pain, are a spiritual experience that can clear the mind and clarify the spirit.
It was an unusually sunny March afternoon in Estonia, and I was lying naked on a bench in the dark interior of a black sauna. My feet rested on a blackened beam, and my head rested on a thin stick. This small bundle of thin oak branches had originally been used to pat my naked body to remove dead skin cells and stimulate circulation, but at this point it had become my pillow. Dry oak leaves, however, become soft after soaking in water. Their earthy, smoky aroma assaulted my nose. The air was humid, and beads of sweat broke out on my body.
Eda Viroja, owner of the Muska smoke sauna, was also naked. She splashed water on hot stones stacked in a brick oven. “I am the wind blowing through the fields… I embrace you, I embrace you,” she sang, the melody like a lullaby, the words floating in the air as steam rose from the stones.
Muska is located in southeastern Estonia, about 20 kilometers from the Russian border. It was part of Vana Võromaa, or Old Võromaa, which included today’s Võru and Porvamaa, as well as parts of Tartu and Valgamaa. This remote, hilly region is the birthplace of the Võro ​​language. Volo is a Finno-Ugric language similar to Estonian, spoken by about 70,000 people.
Veroha spent eight hours preparing the sauna. During the six-hour heating process, she kept adding wood to the stove in the steam room. Since the smoke sauna had no chimney, the steam room filled with smoke and the hot air rose to the ceiling, leaving enough clean air below to keep the fire going. When the temperature inside exceeded 80 degrees Celsius, she opened a small hole in the ceiling and ventilated the sauna for two hours before we entered.
Scandinavian saunas have been around in one form or another for thousands of years. Early Estonian homes were small chimneyless structures with only a stove in the corner, meaning the house could be used as a sauna and vice versa. In the 1980s, archaeological excavations in northern Estonia uncovered the first archaeological evidence of a purpose-built, free-standing sauna, dating back to the 12th or 13th century – likely before the first written record of the Estonian word “saun” in 1241.
Since the Northern Crusades, Germanic culture had come to dominate local trade and religion, and although control of Estonian territory passed from the Danes to the Swedes and then to the Russian Empire, Baltic Germans still formed the bulk of the Estonian landowning class. In the Middle Ages, masons built “smokeless stoves” (stoves with chimneys) for wealthy townspeople and in some city baths.
However, according to the 2023 book Sauna: History, Culture, Health and Architecture, local Estonian culture, including sauna culture, was sealed in a time capsule for 700 years, especially in southern Estonia, far from the Hanseatic cities and trade routes. For centuries, peasant life hardly improved, and until the 1920s, most saunas in southern Estonia did not have chimneys.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Veroja traveled around Estonia and Europe. She soon realized that sauna customs had changed with increasing urbanization and the advent of electric heaters. However, she discovered that Voloma’s smoke sauna still retained a warmth that other saunas had long since lost, and she realized that she had something special to share right in her own backyard.
Since 2009, Viroja has led the movement to have the Wölöm smoke sauna tradition included on the UNESCO list, and in 2014 it was inscribed on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The handbook covers the architecture of smoke saunas, their construction and maintenance, as well as related customs such as smoking meat in the sauna, rituals associated with celebrations, healing and the making of vihta.
Last year, the smoke sauna even made its international big-screen debut with the release of the film “The Sisterhood of the Black Sauna” by director Anna Hinz. Hinz was born in Võru, the capital of Võru County, and spent seven years documenting the experiences of a group of women in numerous smoke saunas across southern Estonia, including Muska. The smoke sauna in the film is like a confessional. The women opened their hearts, laughed, cried, sang, and found a place in the silence. The smoke sauna becomes an additional character in the film – a “cosmic womb,” as Hinz calls it – a place for nurturing and healing.
Having lived in Estonia for almost nine years, I have been in more saunas than I can count, but I have never been to a smoke sauna. I was not bothered by the heat or the fact that I was naked. Even taking a cold shower between sweat sessions was exciting for me. It is this “soul” of a black sauna that makes me a little nervous.
When I spoke with Hits over video in preparation for my visit to Muska, she explained why going to a sauna, especially a black sauna, can be a spiritual practice.
“It’s always been healing… With heat, the physical dirt starts to rise from the depths to the surface, and then the emotional dirt starts to rise… With heat, you can sweat it out. With water, you can wash it away,” Hintz said. “My grandmother always said that in a black sauna, not only is the body cleansed, but the soul is cleansed as well.”
In Mask, I wiped my body with ash and sweat and rinsed it in a pond half covered with ice. Then I returned to the sauna, smeared myself with honey, rubbed my body from head to toe with wight and plunged into the pond again. Returning to the sauna again, I lay down on my stomach and let Viroja carry the wight on my back.
Between workouts, I relax in front of the wood-burning stove in the cozy living room. Viroja explains the Woloma smoke sauna tradition to us, and it feels part history lesson, part guided meditation, while I sip hot tea and cool maple sap from the trees outside. Since I haven’t even glanced at my phone, time seems to have completely slipped away from me.
In the past, Estonians did not consider saunas to be a mindfulness practice, although they were certainly an opportunity to relax and socialize after a week of physical labor. Farmers in southern Estonia also did not have access to doctors like wealthy landowners and manor owners, so their only recourse for pain relief was to visit a sauna.
Today, most people turn to their doctor when they get sick, but Veroha, like Hinz, believes that saunas can be used to treat mental illness in modern society. Studies have shown that heat therapy has physical health benefits, including improved circulation and immune response, but Masca’s sauna sessions are primarily aimed at improving mental health.
Muska visitors, even if they are cross-eyed, are not beaten with goose wings or given ferns to break evil curses, although these customs were once widespread. However, the ritual of greeting and thanking for visiting the sauna has survived. The idea is to give sauna-goers a chance to slow down. Rubbing with ash, for example, is not only a great way to exfoliate, but also to connect the mind and body with physical sensations. “People who have never been to a sauna but regularly practice spiritual practices like yoga or meditation will feel right at home in the sauna,” Veroha said. “If someone can find solace and enjoy what we do in a smoke sauna, then [smoke sauna] can spread as widely as yoga culture.”
Thanks to UNESCO’s cultural heritage and the popularity of Hinz’s films, Estonians are returning to their roots by visiting smoke saunas to slow down and reconnect with family and nature, and are also realizing the economic benefits of preserving this ancient culture.
When Antti Kongsap, 36, was a teenager, he and his brother lived in a sauna for two years while his parents were busy building a house. Although Kongsap remembers those days as lonely and dark, he never lost his love for the sauna. Even while serving in the army, weekly sauna visits provided much-needed stress relief, just as farm workers had done in the past. Last year, he tore down the walls of a smoke sauna that was slated for demolition and hired a builder to rebuild it in a birch grove south of Võru. The smoke sauna is a passion project that he hopes to share with visitors to Estonia.
I asked Kontaup if owning a smoke sauna helped him feel more connected to his past. He said it did, adding, “I’m not very religious myself, but I think the sauna is a great place to connect with spirits. You think about the old days, your grandparents, all the people who came before you. It’s a place to connect with old spirits.”
In the darkness of the Muska sauna, I couldn’t talk to the spirits. I don’t believe in them, and if I did, they would be in my home country, the United States, not Estonia. But now I was in Estonia. Virroja sang softly in English: “You are whole, you are enough.” I didn’t know if I was healed of all my ailments, but I felt whole, and my body and this place were filled with a wonderful sense of presence. That was enough.
BBC Travel’s World of Health takes a global look at health, exploring the different ways people around the world live healthy lives.
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