Finnish Sauna Tradition
The origin of the sauna is usually ascribed to the Finns. The word sauna is a Finnish word widespread. The term not only having a sauna means hanging sweat before taking a shower, but perform a rite that involves the radiation of several periods of sweating and blows steam, produced by throwing water on hot stones. Steam is the spirit of the sauna. Löyly, steam in Finnish, a Finno-Ugric origin word which entered the Finnish vocabulary more than 7,000 years ago. 
In the beginning was sacred and was located in the courtyard of the house. In the twentieth century began to be built next to the lakes as occurred in some residential houses.
The normal thing was to make a sauna session a week and do it together because the heating enclosure was laborious and could take an entire day and required experience and patience in preparing the wood and the lighting and maintenance of the stove, and as in the preparation of the bundles of birch branches, the vihta, with which at the time of maximum sweating are often flogged.
The Finnish sauna not only understand as a “purification” of the body, also see it as “purification” of the spirit. Until the Second World War was the place where she gave birth and was preparing the body for burial. All this work is mainly done by women of the house, as in the case of childbirth, had “days of sauna” linked to these activities.
The implementation of a sauna is governed by rules and thrusts. There is a maxim that
In the sauna and in the church gathering is required
referring to the calm that should prevail in these precincts.
In a sauna should not stir or make noise, even the very talk should be limited by altering the conditions in which they take (amending breathing). The sauna, which is taken naked, had a certain image of promiscuity, when it is used to take turns differentiated by sex (in Finnish rural communities first had men accompanied by the pattern of the community and then women were headed by a woman of the same). Modern facilities in different saunas for men and women.
Custom Finnish sauna is linked to the agrarian calendar and the folkloric. Many efforts were made around the sauna and, on special days, predictions could be made to bring good luck next time or at special events such as weddings or harvests. In Koivisto, on the Isthmus of Karelia, took a sauna before the first day of the year because it ensured that
work will be done all year long and nothing will be delayed if the first day of steam rises into heaven before the sun
Identification of the Finnish sauna is very high. They consider the sauna as a national institution and leave it to overlap with other peoples and cultures, understanding that the sauna has a very spiritual feel than other steam from other cultures such as the Sweat Lodge inapi or American, Japanese furo, the Hamam Arabic, Mexican sweat lodge or the Russian bania. Not forgetting those of European antiquity, the Roman baths.
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