Immigrants from Finland

History - For hundreds of years, Finland was a part of the powerful Kingdom of Sweden but during the 1700's Sweden was challenged by Russia for territorial power. By 1809, Sweden was so weak it was forced to surrender Finland to Russia. (Source 1, Source 2) Immigration - The first immigrants arrived in 1864, when Finns from northern Finland and Norway settled on homestead prairie lands in south central Minnesota. (Source)


Although Finnish Americans established communities throughout the northern United States, over 60 percent of Finnish Americans settled in the northern parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. (Source)

Over half of all Finns that arrived in the United States lived in rural areas. It was claimed you could always tell a farm owned by a immigrant from Finland because of its buildings. This included a traditional bathhouse and its distinctively-shaped hay barn. Most Finnish settlers were Lutherans and tended to hold progressive political views. Finns were active in trade unions and the early socialist movement in the United States. (Source)

Clothing - Finnish immigrants who landed on American soil in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as peasants or workers wore heavy woolen stockings, shirts, and skirts. Women wore a triangular scarf, called a huivi, over their heads. However, no traditional clothing was worn for special events and ceremonies. (Source)







Adjusting to the American way - Almost off the boat, young women would discard the triangular cotton scarf ( huivi ) worn over their hair or the heavy woolen shawl wrapped around their bodies and begin to wear the big wide hats and fancy puffed sleeve bodices so popular in the States at the end of the nineteenth century. Men donned bowler hats and stiff starched collars above their suit coats. Those Finnish immigrant women who began their lives in America working as domestics quickly learned to make American style pies and cakes. And the Finns' log cabins, erected on barely cleared cutover lands, were covered with white clapboard siding as soon as finances permitted. (Source)


Sources: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfinland.htm http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761587479/finnish_americans.html http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Finnish-Americans.html (Main Source) http://www.finland.org/public/default.aspx?nodeid=35862&contentlan=2&culture=en-US#hist