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Today, a movement of Duluth-area sauna manufacturers and “facilitators” are bringing Minnesota-made saunas into the national spotlight. These so-called “saunapreneurs” are aiming to make Duluth the nation’s “Capital of Sauna,” taking Minnesota’s deep-rooted Scandinavian heritage and exporting Nordic culture around the country.
The sauna is backyard health and wellness at its finest. Here’s the pitch: Spend time disconnected from technology in a tranquil, thermal oasis in the company of family and friends. First, sweat the stress out, then immerse yourself in rejuvenating, revitalizing cold water.
The rest of the country is catching on. National media is fanning the flames, drawing attention to big health studies, such as one by Finnish cardiologist Dr. Jari Laukannen that suggests a longer lifespan in Finns comes from their regular sauna practice.
Scandinavian countries have been taking sauna for millennia, and their sacred sauna rituals were one of the things they could bring with them when immigrating to the upper Midwest. Now, Americans, exhausted from the pandemic and other woes, are embracing sauna, as well, buying beautiful, often-portable saunas built in Minnesota for their California and Connecticut backyards. Northern Minnesota sauna and sauna stove producers say sales are “blowing up.”
Let’s meet some of the northeast Minnesotans who are getting the sauna industry burning hotter than ever.
Courtesy of Chris Pascone
The Great Duluth Sweat Together
Rod Raymond, previous co-owner of the popular Fitger’s Brewhouse in Duluth, helped organize the inaugural “Great Duluth Sweat Together” in March. A community sauna party on the Lake Superior waterfront, the event aimed to set a Guinness World Record for most inhabitants per capita to take a sauna in one city in a day. The Sweat Together featured 12 mobile saunas and sauna tents open to the public in Canal Park, steps away from icy cold Superior.
Raymond says his outdoor party in bathing suits was about raising donations for Life House Duluth, to combat youth homelessness, and also about promoting Duluth as a sauna capital. More than 500 people attended the event, which then-mayor Emily Larson opened.
Raymond’s current businesses—the Oliver Inn and Evolve Yoga in downtown Duluth, and Endion Station Inn in Canal Park—all include sauna time for guests. Raymond also has a home sauna and barrel sauna at his off-grid cabin on the Cloquet River.
As a triathlete, Raymond says he sees the benefits of sauna for recovery from physical exertion. “You have to take a timeout to sauna. You’re sitting. It’s a contemplative practice, which is especially important in today’s topsy-turvy upside-down world.”
Now, Raymond is pushing for Duluth to become the center of America’s sauna health movement. “The Finnish studies snuck into the press … and it opened up the idea that sauna and cold plunging are good for your brain,” Raymond says. “Your dopamine counts go up. It’s all about changing your temperature radically.”
Raymond is planning a 2024 edition of the Great Duluth Sweat Together for the end of April. He’s proud this event, along with the Great Northern Festival around the Twin Cities metro, are among the first in the country to publicly embrace sauna as transformative and healthy.
Setri Barrel Saunas, Grand Rapids
Chris Hachey, who lives in Cloquet, has been taking saunas since he was a little kid. He started Setri Barrel Saunas in Grand Rapids two years ago. “We got onto the scene right before it all blew up. I think COVID had a big thing to do with it. People started asking, ‘What are we going to do now for health and wellness?’ Well, sauna! And it ignited. I just never knew it would grow to the state it’s in now. It’s unbelievable.”
Hachey took his family to Oslo, Norway, this summer. “Part of our trip was to see how they do sauna and why it’s so big there. It’s massive.”
He picked up some ideas. Hachey notes that Oslo has a floating sauna village in the city harbor, with showers, lockers, changing rooms, and six different types of saunas. He sees the same potential in his backyard: “Duluth would be the prime place in the United States to look into how they’re doing their sauna culture in the city center in Oslo and mimic it.”
Setri Barrel Saunas (“setri” meaning “cedar” in Finnish) is a family business that was born during a campfire talk. Hachey has taken the family traditions of sauna and carpentry—since his family has 45 years of professional carpentry experience—and blended the two to make handmade barrel saunas, which can be transported via trailer. Hachey tows one when the family goes ice fishing.
The local production is a point of pride. “We’re producing three or four saunas a week,” he says. “We do everything right in Grand Rapids. We mill our own lumber and build the saunas from scratch. Our woodstoves are made by Range Steel Fabricators on the Iron Range. A local artist from Bovey etches the artwork on the windows, and she makes the metal sauna signs.”
Does Hachey think the sauna market is getting saturated? Hardly. “I truly think we haven’t reached the peak yet. I think it’s just begun.”
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Sauna du Nord, Duluth
Megan Kress launched Sauna du Nord in Duluth in October of 2022. People rent the mobile sauna for parties, family get-togethers, sporting events, and other social functions. Kress hauls the 2,500-pound trailered sauna to homes and business driveways, where she splits and stacks wood, lights the sauna stove, and gives instructions.
But Kress’ work goes beyond operations, marketing, and accounting; she’s a sauna facilitator and educator. During her community sauna nights, open to the public, she addresses questions and gives suggestions, followed by, “Now I’m going to get out of the way.”
“We’re talking about a tradition that’s thousands of years old,” Kress says, “and there are traditions and rituals that are very personal. I don’t believe that there’s a right or a wrong way to do it.”
Education is critical to sauna going mainstream in American culture, and Kress and other “saunapreneurs” recognize their leading role. Kress, a wilderness trip guide in her previous career, teaches newbies to, above all, enjoy the experience.
“I think people are paying greater attention to their mental health now and seeking out valuable experiences,” she says. “We’re in a movement of wanting to have experiences instead of things. I see it happening in the younger generations.”
Photo by Angela Jo
Cedar & Stone Nordic Sauna, Duluth
Cedar & Stone Nordic Sauna co-owner Justin Juntunen grew up in a Finnish family in Esko, 20 minutes outside Duluth. Today, he’s building what he says is the country’s first publicly available floating sauna. Surrounded by a body of water, a floating sauna is extra scenic and makes one portion of the experience—the icy plunge—practically unavoidable.
How will it float? Juntunen’s version is on a barge. The United States Coast Guard came to visit the barge recently, and safety inspections have been made. “When you put things on water, a lot can change,” Juntunen says. “We need to be more careful, more safe, more thoughtful. It’s a very large structure, with two wood-burning heaters in it. I’m really looking forward to it.” Look for the public launch on the Duluth harbor at the end of 2023.
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Juntunen likes to tell the story of Duluth’s sauna history, going back 100 years to when the city was named “Little Helsinki” thanks to the Finnish immigrants arriving at the world’s largest freshwater port. Duluth had up to 10 public saunas at the time. “That history is a really interesting, often untold story,” he says. “We, as Duluthians, can tell that story more deeply and culturally than in other parts of the country, where sauna is like a ‘workout machine’ and people don’t know the history and culture and practice of it.”
Juntunen calls “saunapreneurs” purveyors of true sauna. “We’re saying, ‘Don’t just turn sauna into Zumba; don’t just turn it into Crossfit. Don’t lose the heritage—include it in your sauna practice.’”
Cedar & Stone lives by these words. It trains sauna entrepreneurs from around the country every six months, and the program seems to be working. Juntunen gives an example of his company’s nationwide impact: “I just got off a call with a client designing a bathhouse in Nashville. It’s 5,000 square feet, with 10 saunas. That’s the horizon. We in Duluth are the most mature sauna market in the U.S. There are so many more people out there who don’t know what sauna is yet.”
Juntunen’s goal for the next decade is to invite a million people to experience sauna. “How big can we make this wave?”
Lamppa Manufacturing, Tower
Saunas don’t work without heat. Lamppa Manufacturing, in Tower, Minnesota, is a fourth-generation sauna stove producer. These are “the best sauna stoves made in North America,” according to Justin Juntunen.
Garrett Lamppa, company CEO, says his family’s business dates to the 1930s, when his great grandfather started building sauna stoves for friends. There was a long period when the company was small and hyper-local, selling about 100 stoves a year.
Then America discovered sauna. Lamppa has seen sales explode. “We’re at least five times bigger over the last four years or so,” he says. “We’re at 500-plus stoves a year right now. I anticipate the market to keep growing.”
Today, Lamppa Manufacturing has a cutting-edge sauna stove called the Kuuma BluFlame. This stove takes cues from the company’s wood-burning home furnace that uses gasification technology, needing only eight to 10 pieces of wood to heat a sauna for a day. “From an emissions and efficiency standpoint, it’s like taking an EPA-approved home woodstove and putting it inside a sauna environment,” Lamppa says.
The Future Looks Steamy
Saunas are becoming a fad in America, and time will tell if the industry goes gimmicky or stays true to the practice’s cultural roots.
One Minnesotan who’s been observing the sauna industry for decades is Glenn Auerbach, editor and writer of the SaunaTimes website, which Auerbach started in 2007.
“There’s this thing about experiences,” he says. “Sauna is both a noun and a verb. A place we go and a thing we do. People are paying over $30,000 for one in their backyard and $30 and more to go do it somewhere else.”
With Minnesota sauna and stove producers leading the way, the country is about to get experienced.
