New and Ancient Irish Sauna Traditions on Today with Claire Byrne

RTÉ News​

26-05-2025

Rosanna Cooney talks to Claire Byrne about what saunas mean to her, their importance in various cultures across the world and the forgotten legacy of sauna culture in Ireland. Listen back above.
In countries like Finland, saunas have been a part of everyday life for centuries. It turns out that there's an ancient, long-forgotten tradition of saunas here in Ireland; according to Rosanna Cooney, author of Sweat House, The New and Ancient Irish Sauna Tradition. Rosanna spoke to Claire Byrne about how she came to write her book.
In late 2022, Rosanna says she was feeling overwhelmed and finding life extremely challenging. She remembers hearing about a sweat lodge in Wicklow and decided to give it a go:
"When I needed to feel something else, I just thought, that's what I need. To go somewhere for a few hours and not have to think."
A sweat lodge is generally a dark, crowded, tent-like sauna in which the heat is supplied by hot stones. The practice is inspired by Native American ceremonies of purification and healing. As well as the intense heat, Rosanna says she experienced an emotional release:
"All the pain I had been trapping inside my own body was kind of brought to the surface. And it was like the heat became this kind of emotional poultice, that could bring out what was inside."
The positive impact on her mood was welcome, and Rosanna says it also felt strangely familiar. She began to research the history of saunas around the world:
"This is something that goes back much longer than the past 6 or 10 years that we've had sauna in Ireland. And so I started really digging into it and I went back to prehistory about 3,000 years ago."
Rosanna says she came across reports of ancient sweat lodge culture on the Island of Ireland, concentrated in particular areas of the country. To find out where these ancient traditions were most prevalent, there's more in the full interview; click on the image above. Physical evidence of Irish sweat lodges remains to this day, she says:
"Coming up towards pre-famine, 17th/18th Century, we had these stone domes that are still scattered around the country. You can still go visit them. You can crawl inside them, exactly where people would have crawled into them a few hundred years ago."
Rosanna says it's very likely these stone domes were used as sweat lodges for similar reasons that saunas are nowadays – to promote mental and physical wellbeing:
"These are places people pursued for arthritis or rheumatism but possibly also for something else; you know to have that kind of transported feeling; to go somewhere else with their minds and their bodies."
Claire asks Rosanna how these old Irish 'saunas' worked. Rosanna explained the logistics:
"The fire, usually with turf, would be lit inside this chamber, let's call it. And they are quite small spaces; like it would be hard to stand up in one. Then the fire would burn fire for a few hours, then once the stone walls had absorbed enough heat and energy of the fire, the turf would be scraped out, and green rushes would be strewn on the ground."
Participants were usually naked, Rosanna says, and they would crawl in on the rushes to avoid getting scorched. They would then sit in the dark and the entrance to the stone sweat lodge would be plugged shut:
"That's when the temperature would really shoot up. And what's really interesting is that we know from modern archaeological interrogation of the sweat house, is that the temperature in there for people reached 90 degrees."
Rosanna travelled widely to research her book. She says she wanted to experience what an unbroken sauna tradition looked like, as is the case in Finland, for example:
"I really wanted to see what it looked like to have an unbroken tradition of sauna. Whereas in Ireland we have this really deep, rich amazing history, but it has been broken over time."
Taking saunas followed by a cold plunge in icy water has become a part of Rosanna's life now and she says she finds the combined effect to be mentally and physically beneficial:
"You're bringing your body through these extremes of heat and cold and then bringing it into this beautiful resting period, where everything can actually come back to an equilibrium."
An added benefit, she finds, is improved sleep:
"You just sleep SO well afterwards. Sleep is so restorative for us and I think we know the benefits – often a brilliant night's sleep after a sauna just sets you up again for the next day.
Rosanna talks more about the psychological benefits of saunas that she has experienced in her own life, as well as some of the cultural differences in sauna practices in different countries in the full interview with Claire Byrne, which you can listen back to above.