International Sauna Association ISA

International Sauna Association is an association of national and other sauna societies and private people. It was founded first time in 1957 but the real operations started in  summer  1977 after the meeting in Helsinki. There it was decided that the domicile of the association is  Helsinki. From the founding members Austria , Germany , Japan and Finland have been continuously members. Besides those there are today 13 other members. The President has been all these years from  the Finnish Sauna Society.

ISS shall pursue the goal of publicizing the sauna and promoting its use on a global scale by rallying supporters of sauna activities in different countries. This goal is served e.g. by acceptance of the Definition of Sauna recorded in Aachen 1999 as well as promoting the scientific study of the sauna from e.g. such viewpoints as social history , folklore , medicine and technology.

A particular emphasis is given on the collection and compilation in archives of the results of such scientific studies as well as other written material on sauna. This material can be found from the data base www.saunaliteratur.de created by Professor Eberhard Conradi , German Sauna-Bund and ISS.

The goal is also served by organizing International Sauna Congresses. The last Congress was held in Tokyo Japan in 2010 . The next one is going to be in 2014 but the place has not been decided yet. The published material from all 15 gongresses is a valuable data base for sauna reserach .

The Board of Directors for 2011 - 2014  :

Risto Elomaa                 Finland         President

Peter Jeitler                  Austria          Vice President

Carsten Sonnenberg    Germany       Member

Rolf- A. Piper                 Germany       Member

Jiri Kouba                      Czheck          Member

Pekka Tommila              Finland          Member

Kenichi Nakano             Japan            Member

Michael B. Jensen          Denmark       Member