Hancock High School photo As the 2024/2025 school year wound down, Hancock’s shop students completed a custom-built cedar sauna with a changing room.

HANCOCK – For Finns, sauna is a near sacred space for physical and mental cleansing. In fact, the sauna was so significant to Finnish culture and tradition, it was often the first structure built on the homestead by 19th and early 20th century Finnish immigrants. The sauna served as temporary living quarters while the family house was under construction.

In its mission to preserve and promote this aspect of Finnish culture and tradition, the Finlandia Foundation National (FFN) has announced Feb. 15-21 as National Sauna Week. This year celebrates the fifth anniversary of National Sauna Week, according to FFN.

National Sauna Week was originally launched by FNN as an educational effort to deepen understanding of Finnish sauna tradition. Originally launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly grew to include webinars and in-person events in February.

Starting as a small series of online talks in 2021, it developed into a broader celebration featuring, webinars with historians, folklorists, and builders, the FNN website says. Early sessions featured folklorists, historians, and builders–including a foundational talk on smoke saunas that helped establish a culture-first approach. Five years later, the event reaches tens of thousands of participants across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, generating more than 5 million digital impressions in 2025 alone.

While the FNN acquired the Finnish American Heritage Center from Finlandia University, in early 2024, The Heritage Center has incorporated Sauna Week into its annual Heikinpäivä celebration. Sauna Week was celebrated during the week of Jan. 25-30 and included self-guided tours of Copper Country saunas.

Jesse Wiederhold, managing director of Visit Keweenaw, said from a promotional standpoint, there is so much emphasis placed on Heikinpäivä, it made sense to celebrate Sauna Week during the local event, adding that the Keweenaw is currently seeing a significant revival in sauna culture.

“This year,” he said, “there was about 13 or 15 saunas on the Heikinpäivä tour.”

For Heikinpäivä 2027, the hope is to make public saunas available.

“That’s the goal for next year,” Wiederhold said. “It’s to bring saunas to Quincy Green and establish sauna opportunities around the Keweenaw and make it a lot more interactive next year.”

Wiederhold said the sauna culture in the Keweenaw is growing exponentially as heritage travel brings more people from out of the area. Heritage travel focuses on visiting locations, sites, and regions that connect to one’s personal, familial, or cultural roots to explore history, ancestry, and identity.

“What really happened was Mt. Bohemia has had wonderful success with its Nordic Spa, and then we saw Takka Saunas open their Superior location in Eagle Harbor, that was a great amenity. Folks are very interested in coming up and experiencing it. They are so lucky to be able to experience the sauna as part of their Finnish immersion.”

The FNN website says National Sauna Week celebrates the Finnish sauna tradition across North America with online educational programming, cultural conversations and in-person sauna experiences hosted by partner saunas nationwide. The week highlights sauna as both a wellness practice and a cultural tradition rooted in community, connection and respect for nature.

To learn more about it or register for FNN online events, visit https://www.nationalsaunaweek.com/