Although Finnish-Americans are a relatively small segment of society, Finns have played a significant role in American history since their arrival on these shores more than 300 years ago. In addition to the familiar sauna, sisu, Sibelius, Paavo Nurmi and other Olympic athletes, and the repayment of the Finnish World War I debt to the United States, Finnish-Americans have enjoyed a reputation in a number of social and cultural areas of which many people may be unaware.
To know and appreciated modern Finnish-Americans is to pry into their distant past far enough to find out they, except for some of Swedish extraction, are neither descendants of Scandinavians nor Mongols as classified by Blumenbach, who wrote the first book on racial differences in 1775. In De Generiis Humani Varietate Nativa, he divided the world's races into any of these five, based on skin color. The Finns didn't fit into any of these, so he lumped them in with the Mongols. Later, this classification was passed from one reference book to another, until anthropologists finally realized something was wrong. In 1908, a Duluth Minnesota judge, W.A. Cant, made a bold decision. He officially declared that Finns were not of the yellow race.
Finns are actually Finno-Ugrians, who began their wanderings about 8,000 years ago somewhere between the Ural Mountains and the big bend of the Volga River. After lingering awhile along the Baltic, two tribes, the Tavasts and the proper Finns (yarsinaissuomlaiset), crossed the sea and settled in central Finland. Others stayed behind in Estonia. Even today, Finns and Finnish-Americans can converse comfortably with Estonians in Finnish. The other large "family" members, the Magyars, migrated to Hungary. There is a language similarity, but their words have entirely a different meaning.
The Karelinas came by land from the region of Lake Ladoga and made their homes in the large area north of Leningrad. From the west and south came the Scandinavians, particularly the Swedes, who became colonists and administrators after the annexation of Finland by Sweden in the later thirtieth century.
For these reasons, the "typical" blond, blue-eyed Finn of the travel folder is only part of the picture. Many have dark hair and gray eyes; some are stolid and silent in temperament, while others are flamboyant, artistic and talkative. To confuse matters further, Finnish immigrants in America were sometimes labeled as Russians because technically Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Czar. Others came in as Norwegians because their trips originated in Norway, where they were working in the mines. Some early arrivals came without proper papers. About one-fifth of them were classified as Swedes because Swedish was their native tongue.
The one common denominator among these immigrants seems to have been the Finnish characteristic popularly known as sisu. Loosely, translated, sisu means "guts," a quality that enabled the Finns to survive the harsh climate in their land of forest, water and rock, and the pressure of two powerful neighboring countries which alternately ruled Finland. This stubborn courage helped them hold fast to their Finnish language in spite of Swedish and Russian efforts to get rid of it. And without sisu, the poor immigrants in English-speaking America probably couldn't have made it.
Finns first came to America to set up a
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