The first thing that strikes me about Kalma Saun is that there is nowhere to hide. Brilliant white tiles stretch from floor to ceiling and buffed steel faucets reflect the glare from fluorescent lights—as if I am standing in an interrogation room rather than Tallinn’s oldest public sauna.
The interior is as bare as I feel, and I itch for my favorite swimsuit, which hangs limply in the changing room locker. Yet nakedness is the status quo here. Entry to the women’s area requires I wear nothing, apart from my silver jewelry, a last layer of armor that scalds my skin in the soupy heat. Raw and elemental, sauna-goers alternate between the extremes. Women purge and plunge, sweat and shiver. Occasionally, they interrupt this ritual, to whip themselves with a damp birch branch or scour their bodies with a coarse cloth. Flagellation, in this case, is anything but brutal. Instead, it’s a natural form of self-care, with women occasionally lending a hand to beat the hard-to-reach parts of each other’s backs.
Similar to Finland, saunas are an integral part of Estonian identity, but in a country with a population of just over one million, they have never quite reached the renown of their Baltic neighbors. In Tallinn, saunas are ubiquitous—a mainstay in family homes, museums, and even bars—and a new appreciation for them is sweeping Estonia. In part, it’s because they provide a space for women to converge and wash away the shame cast over their bodies.
As a British tourist, several Estonians warned me against visiting Kalma Saun—perhaps because of my own country’s more prudish attitudes towards public baths, or because this particular sauna isn’t engineered to appeal to outsiders. Constructed in 1928, the specter of the Soviet era still lingers in its lofty granite columns and Art Deco flourishes. When I enter, locals are bunched in groups in pointed hats like church bells, as they unwind and trade news in the fierce heat.
But my interest was piqued after a documentary was released earlier this year, capturing the significance of Estonia’s sacred sauna tradition for women. The Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, a lyrical look at dozens of women who gather in a South Estonian smoke sauna, collected the prestigious director’s award in the World Cinema Documentary category at Sundance Film Festival. Set in the Võro community, where smoke saunas have existed for centuries, the film unfolds in a timber cabin without a chimney where stones are heated to 100 degrees, and ancestral rituals of chanting, strumming, and smoking meat take place.
