Finns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Finns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula
Author: The Finnish American Heritage Center
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 146712978X

"On Midsummer Eve, 1865, more than 30 Finnish and Sami immigrants disembarked from a Great Lakes ship to a place called Hancock, Michigan. At the time, Hancock consisted of nothing more than a small cluster of humble buildings, but it was here, on the outskirts of mid-19th-century civilization, that Finnish settlement in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP) took root. Much to the surprise of these new Americans, Midsummer was not a religious holiday marked by feasts in celebration of the season's prolonged sunlight. Rather, the newcomers were immediately hastened into the bowels of the earth to extract copper in pursuit of the American Dream. In short order, hardworking Finnish immigrants became reputable miners, lumberjacks, farmers, maids, and commercial fishermen. A century and a half later, the UP boasts the largest Finnish population outside of the motherland and sustains the determined spirit the Finns call sisu--an influence that remains palpable in all 15 UP counties."--

Finns in Wisconsin

Finns in Wisconsin
Author: Mark Knipping
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2013-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0870205323

From mining to logging to farming, Finns played an important role in the early development of Wisconsin. Although their immigration to the state came later than that of most other groups, their contributions proved just as significant. Finns pride themselves for their sisu, a Finnish term which, roughly translated, means fortitude or perseverance, especially in the face of adversity. They needed their strength of character to help them face the difficult task of building a new life in a new land. Many Finns arriving in Wisconsin, unable to own land at home, hoped to establish themselves as small independent farmers in the new land. They settled mainly in northern Wisconsin, due to jobs and land available there. This book traces the history of Finnish settlement in Wisconsin, from the large concentrations of Finns in the northern region, to the smaller "Little Finlands" created in other areas of the state. Revised and expanded, this new edition contains the richly detailed story of one Finnish woman, told in her own words, of her hardships and experiences in traveling to a new country and her resourcefulness and strength in adapting to a new culture and building a new life.

Finns in Minnesota

Finns in Minnesota
Author: Arnold Robert Alanen
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0873518608

This succinct yet comprehensive volume outlines the contributions and culture of Minnesota's Finnish Americans, perhaps best known for their cooperative ventures, their political involvement, and, of course, their saunas.

History of the Finns in Michigan

History of the Finns in Michigan
Author: Armas Kustaa Ensio Holmio
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2001
Genre: Finnish Americans
ISBN: 9780814329740

A history of the Finnish people in Michigan published in English for the first time.

Finland-Swedes in Michigan

Finland-Swedes in Michigan
Author: Mika Roinila
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1609173252

Who are the Finland-Swedes? Defined as citizens of Finland with a Swedish mother tongue, many know these people as “Swede- Finns” or simply “Swedes.” This book, the first ever to focus on this ethnolinguistic minority living in Michigan, examines the origins of the Finland-Swedes and traces their immigration patterns, beginning with the arrival of hundreds in the United States in the 1860s. A growing population until the 1920s, when immigration restrictions were put in place, the Finland-Swedes brought with them unique economic, social, cultural, religious, and political institutions, explored here in groundbreaking detail. Drawing on archival, church, and congregational records, interviews, and correspondence, this book paints a vivid portrait of Finland-Swedish life in photographs and text, and also includes detailed maps that show the movement of this group over time. The latest title in the Discovering the Peoples of Michigan series even includes a sampling of traditional Finland-Swedish recipes.

The Search for a Socialist El Dorado

The Search for a Socialist El Dorado
Author: Alexey Golubev
Publisher: MSU Press
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1628950110

In the 1930s, thousands of Finns emigrated from their communities in the United States and Canada to Soviet Karelia, a region in the Soviet Union where Finnish Communist émigrés were building a society to implement their ideals of socialist Finland. To their new socialist home, these immigrants brought critically needed skills, tools, machines, and money. Educated and skilled, American and Canadian Finns were regarded by Soviet authorities as agents of revolutionary transformations who would not only modernize the economy of Soviet Karelia, but also enlighten its society. North American immigrants, indeed, became active participants of socialist colonization of what Bolshevik leaders perceived as dark, uneducated and backward Soviet ethnic periphery. The Search for a Socialist El Dorado is the first comprehensive account in English of this fascinating story. Using a vast body of documentary sources from archives in Petrozavodsk and Moscow, Russian- and Finnish-language press and literature from the 1930s, oral history interviews and secondary literature, Alexey Golubev and Irina Takala explore in depth the “Karelian fever” among Finnish Americans and Canadians, and the lives of immigrants in the Soviet Union, their contribution to Soviet economy and culture, and their fates in the Great Terror.

Kalevala

Kalevala
Author: Elias Lönnrot
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2021-04-29
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0241403073

'One of the great mythic poems of Europe' The New York Times Sharing its title with the poetic name for Finland - 'the land of heroes' - Kalevala is the soaring epic poem of its people, a work rich in magic and myth which tells the story of a nation through the ages from the dawn of creation. Sung by rural Finns since prehistoric times, and formally compiled by Elias Lönnrot in the nineteenth century, it is a landmark of Finnish culture and played a vital role in galvanizing its national identity in the decades leading to independence. Its themes, however, reach beyond borders and search the heart of human existence. Translated with an Introduction by Eino Friberg

Deep River

Deep River
Author: Karl Marlantes
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Total Pages: 786
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0802146198

Three Finnish siblings head for the logging fields of nineteenth-century America in the New York Times–bestselling author’s “commanding historical epic” (Washington Post). Born into a farm family, the three Koski siblings—Ilmari, Matti, and Aino—are raised to maintain their grit and resiliency in the face of hardship. This lesson in sisu takes on special meaning when their father is arrested by imperial Russian authorities, never to be seen again. Lured by the prospects of the Homestead Act, Ilmari and Matti set sail for America, while young Aino, feeling betrayed and adrift after her Marxist cell is exposed, follows soon after. The brothers establish themselves among a logging community in southern Washington, not far from the Columbia River. In this New World, they each find themselves—Ilmari as the family’s spiritual rock; Matti as a fearless logger and entrepreneur; and Aino as a fiercely independent woman and union activist who is willing to make any sacrifice for the cause that sustains her. Layered with fascinating historical detail, this novel bears witness to the stump-ridden fields that the loggers—and the first waves of modernity—leave behind. At its heart, Deep River explores the place of the individual, and of the immigrant, in an America still in the process of defining its own identity.

My Father Spoke Finglish at Work

My Father Spoke Finglish at Work
Author: Noreen Sippola Fairburn
Publisher: Voices of Diversity
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

A regional view of Finnish immigration In 1874 the first Finnish immigrants came to Northeast Ohio's Lake Erie port towns to work on the docks loading coal or unloading iron ore from ships sailing the Great Lakes or to work on the railroads. As with most immigrant groups, the Finns clustered in the same area, hoping to retain their language, customs, and culture, even in the New World. The Finnish American Heritage Association of Ashtabula County was organized in 1995, and one of its first projects was the interviewing and taping of elderly Finnish Americans to obtain historical accounts of early immigrants. These first-person accounts were written as the narrator told them. Many of the first- and second-generation Finns were in their eighties or nineties at the time of their interviews, yet their recollections of times gone by were told with frankness and clarity. Photographs representative of these early years are also included in this volume. Genealogists and those interested in immigration studies will find these first-person accounts valuable research tools and fascinating testimonies to the migrant experience.