The 10 best saunas in the Nordics

Tampere's unchanged heat since 1906 · Tampere

The session here is the room itself: a dark, low-ceilinged sauna and a wood-heated stove that have not fundamentally changed in over a century. Tampere has kept it running as a public sauna since 1906, which makes it the oldest in Finland. Come for the tradition and stay long enough to feel why it has survived.

Smoke · € · Drop-in

Helsinki's last wood-fired public sauna · Helsinki

Helsinki's last remaining public wood-fired sauna, operating continuously since 1928 in the Kallio neighbourhood. The löyly is fierce, the benches are worn smooth and the regulars do not say much. No design concept, no brand, just heat.

Finnish · € · Drop-in

Smoke, birch, pond, repeat · Haanja

Give it the whole afternoon. The chimneyless sauna is heated slowly over a day, then Eda Veeroja leads at least three hours of it: whisking with birch, cooling in the pond, back into the smoke. Estonia's smoke-sauna tradition holds a UNESCO listing, and this farm in the Haanja hills is where you meet it, by arrangement only.

Smoke · €€€ · Cold plunge · Session-booked

A logging-camp smoke sauna for a hundred · Kuopio

A 1950s logging-camp cabin on the shore of Kallavesi, six hundred metres from the Rauhalahti hotel along a sand track through a nature reserve. Its smoke sauna has held more than a hundred bathers at once. Traditional evenings run every Tuesday, year round, with a buffet dinner and live music.

Smoke · Finnish · € · Cold plunge · Drop-in

Malmö's kallbadhus, ladder into the strait · Malmö

Ribban is the kallbadhus as Malmö has practised it since 1898: single-sex sides, open-air bathing, and a ladder into the Öresund doing the work a Finnish lake does. Pick the wood-fired sauna among the several, catch an aufguss if one is running, and go down the ladder between rounds. The strait at sunset is the cooling view.

Finnish · Steam · under 275 kr · Cold plunge · Drop-in

Smoke and wood heat on the Baltic · Helsinki

Helsinki's most architecturally striking public sauna, a timber-lattice building on the Hernesaari waterfront with direct sea access. The smoke sauna and the wood-heated sauna sit side by side, both opening onto the Baltic. There is a restaurant on site for afterwards, and it earns the hype.

Finnish · Smoke · €€ · Session-booked

Smoke sauna in the winter forest · Helsinki

A lakeside sauna complex in the Sipoonkorpi forest, thirty minutes from the centre of Helsinki. A smoke sauna heated for hours, a frigid lake for plunging and birch trees in every direction. The winter weekend smoke sauna sessions are as good as it gets: dark sky, snow underfoot, hot smoke.

Smoke · € · Drop-in

A village of a dozen saunas · Oslo

A waterfront culture complex by the Opera House, built around a village of a dozen saunas. It is anchored by Árdna, a vast Sámi-inspired sauna that doubles as a venue for rituals and DJ sets. You move between the saunas and the cold pools over a long session, with a bar and the harbour for company.

Finnish · under 290 kr · Cold plunge · Drop-in

Torne river plunge beside the Icehotel · Jukkasjärvi

The Culture Sauna stands by the old homestead in Jukkasjärvi, a short walk from the Icehotel. A guided ritual moves a group through two saunas, a plunge in the Torne river and heated outdoor tubs. This is the house where the Swedish Sauna Academy began.

Finnish · 275–550 kr · Cold plunge · Session-booked

Free heat behind twelve thousand bottles · Gothenburg

A public sauna in Gothenburg's regenerated Frihamnen docks, designed by the Berlin collective Raumlabor. The façade is salvaged corrugated steel and the shower walls are built from twelve thousand recycled glass bottles. It holds up to twenty-five across men's, women's and mixed sections, looks out over the harbour and is free to use.

Finnish · Free · Drop-in