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VIA medium.com: A century old Seto Estonian smoke sauna has been discovered …in Canada


The sauna builder’s grandson has just been granted permission to recover the smoke sauna and restore it in the Rocky Mountains.

The more we write about Estonian saunas, the more people write to us about weird and wonderful Estonian saunas for us to cover.

One in particular stood out recently. It’s a Seto smoke sauna. It’s not in great condition, but that’s about to change — and it has an incredible story to tell.

The Seto people are a Finno-Ugric minority group in South-East Estonia with a Kingdom that spreads across the border into Russia. Their ancient smoke sauna tradition remains an important part of life there today.

This email did not reach us from the Seto Kingdom, however.

It came from Wayne Nesbitt who lives 7,000 kilometres away over in Toronto, Canada. Wayne has Estonian grandparents who settled in a village called Finland in North Western Ontario. His grandfather arrived in 1911, seven years before Estonia became an independent state and so he later managed to acquire Estonian passport number 79 in order to travel back to Estonia in 1923, marry, and return with Wayne’s grandmother.

Read more via medium.com: A century old Seto Estonian smoke sauna has been discovered …in Canada


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