Log saunas are a beautiful adaptation of northern cultures to their environment. In the long, cold winters of the north, where tall forests of straight-growing spruce and pine define the landscape, people learned to shape weather-tight structures from logs using nothing more than an axe. Sphagnum moss, which grows plentifully in the bogs and forests of the north, was used between the logs as insulation and to prevent draft. In Estonia, the sauna was often built before the house, and was a structure for every stage of life: birthing, bathing, cooking, socializing, even preparing the dead. In the modern world, the log sauna remains an elegant marriage of form and function. with the logs acting as a thermal bank, absorbing and regulating heat and moisture. Sweating in a log sauna allows us to step away from the modern world and reconnect with the elemental forces of nature: wood, fire, stone, and steam.
