The 10 best saunas in the Nordics

Helsinki's most striking public sauna — a timber-lattice building on the Hernesaari waterfront where a smoke sauna and a wood-heated one open side by side onto the Baltic. It earns the hype.

Wood-fired floating saunas on the Oslofjord, one beneath the Opera House, plunging straight into the fjord — with a cruising variant that glides the inner harbour between rounds.

An open-air bathhouse on a pier into the Öresund off Malmö, running since 1898 — a wood-fired sauna, a ladder into the sea, and a long Aufguss tradition. Sunset over the strait is the move.

A Haanja-hills farm keeping the UNESCO-listed Estonian smoke-sauna tradition — a three-hour ritual of chimneyless heat, birch whisking and a cooling pond, by arrangement only.

Finland's oldest public sauna, running since 1906 — a dark, low-ceilinged, wood-heated room essentially unchanged in over a century. A pilgrimage for anyone who cares about the tradition.

Copenhagen's wood-fired sauna and hot-tub garden on the Refshaleøen waterfront — stoke your own fire, plunge in the tubs or the harbour, and sail a hot-tub boat around the city if you book it.

A floating sauna in Tromsø's harbour, well above the Arctic Circle — harbour-facing glass, a plunge into the cold sea, and in winter the dark-and-aurora version of the ritual with Tromsdalstinden across the sound.

A lakeside complex in the Sipoonkorpi forest thirty minutes from Helsinki — a proper smoke sauna heated for hours and a frigid lake to plunge into. The winter weekend sessions, snow underfoot, are as good as it gets.

A free public sauna in Gothenburg's regenerated docks, designed by collective Raumlabor with shower walls of twelve thousand recycled bottles — twenty-five places across men's, women's and mixed sections, sea pools alongside for the dip.

A 2013 public sauna on the Helsinki waterfront, birchwood-lined and quietly beautiful, with direct access to the sea — the rare modern sauna that earns the word without apology. Book ahead.