The History of Baths

Russian Bathing

Banya from the Russian баня is a traditional Russian steam bath, on the same lines as the Finnish sauna. It is not normally as hot as a sauna, but more water is poured onto the hot stones and that creates a higher humidity. Perversely it is drier than a Finnish sauna as the water is vapourised into smaller particles. The initial source of the heat is a wooden stone in a steam room, with wooden benches raised above and around it.

There are two main types of stoves the black banyas (по-чёрному) and the white banyas (по-белому). The smoke escapes through a hole in the ceiling, in the black banyas, so called because the smoke darkens the walls of the oven, the firewood is usually birch. The white banyas are cleaners as they have a tank to heat the water.

Typically, they have three rooms, the entrance, the washing room and the steam room. The entrance room acts as the changing room with benches to rest upon. The washing room normally has a hot tap fed directly from the steam chamber; there is normally a cold tap to regulate the temperature of the water.

The traditional wood fire banyas have a firebox fed from the entrance room. On top of this is the boulders chamber, with a small hole to throw the hot water on. The smoke pipe filters above them through the water tank at the top of the stove, which feeds the washing tap.

The top of the water tank is always sealed, to prevent the hot water entering the chamber, but the water to throw on the rocks is taken from this tank rather than using the cold water. Modern banyas can have an electric heater but the wood-fired heaters create negative ions rather than the electric heaters, which create positive ions. It is thought that the negative ions are more therapeutic, but either way the water is not poured onto the coals until the person is warm; their sweat building up protects the surface of the skin from the effects of the steam.

The Hair is protected from the steam by felt hats called “chapkas” and these are often sold in Russia with a padded seat called a padjopnik and aromatherapy oils. The steam is created by adding small amounts of water which create a fine stream of steam that is quickly dispersed. As in Finland the sweating is interspersed with cooling off either in the snow, or in a river or the sea, or merely standing outside between sweats. The circulation is improved by hitting the skin with the dried branches of the birch tree; however, it is not painful as the leaves are still on the branches. It is not uncommon to serve refreshments between the sweating, sausages and cold beer is popular.

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