WORKING UP A SWEAT
Exploring Ireland’s 17th century stone saunas
Scattered across the landscape of County Leitrim in Ireland are more than 100 sturdy, grass-covered igloo-like stone structures. For a county with only 35,000 inhabitants, the sheer number of these structures is impressive. There are others across Ireland, but nowhere near as many as are found in Leitrim. Long abandoned, they were once a vital part of the healthcare of the local population and the Leitrim Sweathouse Project is now trying to document these structures and understand their history. They date back to the early 17th century, and many continued to be used until the early 20th century. They functioned as a kind of intense stone sauna, usually to treat illness, most commonly rheumatism, arthritis, fevers and respiratory conditions. Turf or wood fires were lit inside the structure and the door and roof vent blocked. Several hours later, the smoke would be released, the embers swept out and the naked patient would crawl in and sweat in the intense heat radiating from the stones for as long as they could bear, before plunging into a nearby stream to cool off.
Many users, though, viewed the cure as worse than the disease, and while sweating does have medicinal benefits for some conditions, the effect must have functioned mostly as a placebo. Some accounts also suggest the sweathouses were used to conceal illicit distilleries or were used for hallucinogen-driven rituals for connecting with ancient gods. Archæologist Aiden Harte, who leads the project, is inclined to doubt this, but as so little is known about the structures, he can’t completely dismiss these ideas. Equally obscure is the origin of the sweathouses. Saunas and the like have a long history in Scandinavia, so perhaps the sweathouses could trace their history to the Vikings, who played a major part in Irish history between the 9th and 12th centuries; but as none seem to date from before the 16th century, this seems unlikely. Other suggestions are that Irish visitors to America could have got the idea from Native American sweat lodges, or even that travellers to the east had been inspired by Islamic hammams. Archæologist Ronan Foley, though, thinks they are just a local variant of a global tradition of sweat cures, arguing that “the healing value of sweating was well known. Building small buildings that induced sweating from local materials would have been sort of worked out by Irish rural dwellers.” bbc.com/travel, 11 Oct 2021.
They are a local variant of a global tradition of sweat cures