Introduction

Walking through the streets of early modern Stockholm, a visitor would, sooner rather than later, encounter the sign of a public bathhouse. A set of metal dishes or a bunch of birch tree twigs hung outside a building was a sign that one could take a sweat bath, or sauna, within. Some sweat baths were large establishments, run by the masters of the city's Bathing Guild. Others were more transitory, illicitly set up and catering to community needs for bathing and socialising. In early modern Sweden (including Finland), there were sweat baths in the cities, in smaller towns and in the countryside. These were places where people met to talk and have a good time. Indeed, nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians and folklorists viewed the sweat bath as an integral part of Nordic medieval and early modern culture. In recent years, however, the bathhouse culture of early modern Sweden has largely been overlooked by historians. This chapter makes a case for reinstating the bathhouse as an integral part of early modern Swedish culture. In particular, in early modern Sweden, a visit to the bathhouse was understood to affect a person's health.

The introduction to this volume contends that ‘health’ as a concept in early modern Sweden referred both to bodily and mental well-being, and to a broader understanding of a person's prosperity in life. Health was also used as a metaphor in religious, moral, and political conceptions of society.