Finnish American

Information about Finnish American

Finnish American

Notable Finnish Americans: 'Matt Damon' 'David Lynch'
Total population
Finnish about 700.000 Americans ^[1] 0.2% of the US population
Regions with significant populations
Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Lake Worth, Florida
Languages
American English, Finnish, Swedish
Religions
Lutheranism, Others

Finnish Americans are Americans of Finnish descent, who currently number about 700,000.

A memorial statue in Hanko, Finland, commemorating the thousands of emigrants who left the country to start a new life in the United States, mainly in Upper Michigan and Minnesota.

History

Finns first started coming to the United States in large numbers in the late 19th century, and continued until the mid 20th century. However, there were some Finns in the United States beforehand; in particular, they were instrumental in the development of the New Sweden colony on the Delaware River, later absorbed into New Netherland. Many townships were established by Finnish Americans, including Herman, located in Baraga County, Michigan. The town is named for Herman Keranen, of Ylivieska, Finland. A significant number of Finnish immigrants also settled in Northern Minnesota, often working in the region's iron mines. A number of the Finns fleeing the Russification efforts also emigrated to many of the mill towns of New England where they became known for their woodworking skills.

Suomi Hall, the meeting hall of Finnish immigrants, in Astoria, Oregon

Demographic concentrations

Today, the greatest concentration of Finnish Americans is in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where they form 16% of the population, and are the largest ancestral group in the peninsula's western counties. The largest Finnish community in the United States, and the largest outside of Scandinavia, is in Lake Worth, Florida, north of Miami [2].

Notable Individuals

Notable Finnish Americans include historian Max Dimont and Gus Hall (originally Arvo Gustav Halberg), U.S. Communist Party leader. Also, an early Ethnic Finn was John Morton, signer of the Declaration of Independence. The original name of the family was Marttinen, of which Morton is an anglicized version. The Marttinen/Morton family came originally from Rautalampi municipality in the region of Northern Savonia, province of Eastern Finland.

Culture

An annual festival is held to celebrate Finnish heritage. The festival is called FinnFest and has been held in a different city each year since the festival was established in 1983. There have also been two FinnGrandFests where American and Canadian groups consolidate their festivals. The next FinnFest is going to be held in Ashtabula, Ohio, July 26-28, 2007.[3]

References

1. ^ US Census Bureau, American FactFinder, Decennial Programs, Census 2000, Data Set Census 2000 Summary File 3 (SF 3) – Sample Data, Table: PCT18 ANCESTRY (TOTAL CATEGORIES TALLIED) FOR PEOPLE WITH ONE OR MORE ANCESTRY CATEGORIES REPORTED [109 Universe].

External links

Finnish American Lives, a documentary film exploring traditional Finnish-American culture (free videostream)

• • [ e] European Americans
North European	British (English • Scots-Irish • Scottish • Welsh) Danish Estonian Faroese Finnish Icelandic Irish Latvian Lithuanian Norwegian Swedish
West European	Austrian Belgian Dutch French (Acadian • Cajun) German Luxembourg Swiss
East European	Armenian Azerbaijani Belarusian Bulgarian Czech Georgian Hungarian Romanian Russian Rusyn Polish Slovak Ukrainian
South European	Albanian Basque Bosnian Croatian Cypriot Greek Italian (Sicilian) Macedonian Maltese Montenegrin Portuguese Serbian Slovenian Spanish Turkish
Other	Jewish American Romani

Matt Damon

Damon at the Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, 7 December 2001
Birth name Matthew Paige Damon
Born September 8 1970 (age 37)
..... Click the link for more information.

David Lynch

David Lynch at Cannes Film Festival in 2001.
Birth name David Keith Lynch
Born January 20 1946 (age 61)
Missoula, Montana, U.S.
..... Click the link for more information.

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is the northern of the two major land masses that comprise the U.S. state of Michigan. It is commonly referred to simply as the Upper Peninsula, the U.P., or Upper Michigan, and more casually as the land "above the Bridge".
..... Click the link for more information.

Lake Worth
Location of Lake Worth, in Palm Beach County, Florida
Coordinates:
Country United States
State Florida
County Palm Beach
Incorporated (city) 1912
Area
..... Click the link for more information.

American English (AmE, AE, AmEng, USEng, en-US), also known as United States English or U.S. English, is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States.
..... Click the link for more information.

Finnish ( suomi (help info ) , or suomen kieli) is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland (91.
..... Click the link for more information.

Swedish}}}
Official status
Official language of: European Union
European Union (in Noarootsi along with Estonian) ^[1]
Finland
Sweden (de facto)
Nordic Council
..... Click the link for more information.

Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity that identifies with the teachings of the sixteenth-century German reformer Martin Luther. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Church launched the Protestant Reformation and, though it was not
..... Click the link for more information.

Finns and Finnish people (Finnish: suomalaiset, Swedish: finlÃ¤ndare) are used in English to mean "a native or inhabitant of Finland", they are also used to refer to the ethnic group historically associated with Finland or Fennoscandia, and
..... Click the link for more information.

Motto
"In God We Trust" (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum" ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
..... Click the link for more information.

New Sweden, or Nya Sverige, was a small Swedish settlement along the Delaware River on the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America. It was centered at Fort Christina, now in Wilmington, Delaware, and included parts of the present-day American states of Delaware, New Jersey,
..... Click the link for more information.

Delaware River

Delaware River above the Delaware Water Gap

Country | USA
States | New York,New Jersey,Pennsylvania,Delaware
Major cities |
..... Click the link for more information.

New Netherland (Dutch: Nieuw-Nederland, Latin: Novum Belgium or Nova Belgica; see here), 1614–1674, was the territory on the eastern coast of North America in the 17th century which stretched from latitude 38 to 45 degrees North as originally
..... Click the link for more information.

Baraga County is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan, named after Bishop Frederic Baraga. As of the 2000 census, the population was 8,746. The county seat is L'Anse⁶. The L'Anse Indian Reservation of the Ojibwa is located within the county.
..... Click the link for more information.

Ylivieska is a town located in Ostrobothnia, Finland. It serves as the administrative centre for Kalajokilaakso and PyhÃ¤jokilaakso, an area with about 90,000 inhabitants.

Ylivieska is also the commercial center of the Oulu South region, the southern part of Oulu province.
..... Click the link for more information.

Anthem
Maamme (Finnish)
VÃ¥rt land (Swedish)
Our Land
..... Click the link for more information.

State of Minnesota

Flag of Minnesota Seal
Nickname(s): North Star State,
The Land of 10,000 Lakes, The Gopher State
Motto(s): L'Ã‰toile du Nord (French: The Star of the North)

Capital Saint Paul

..... Click the link for more information.

For Russification of a computer, see Computer Russification

Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attribute (whether voluntarily or not) by non-Russian communities.
..... Click the link for more information.

Miami, Florida
Miami's downtown skyline

Flag
Seal
Nickname: The Magic City
Location in Miami-Dade County and the state of Florida
Coordinates:
Country
..... Click the link for more information.

Max I. Dimont (born Maximilian Israel DiMont) (August 12, 1912–March 1992) was a Finnish-American historian and author.

Born to a Jewish family in Helsinki, Finland, Dimont came to the United States in August 1929 and was briefly detained at the Ellis Island
..... Click the link for more information.

Gus Hall (October 8, 1910 – October 13, 2000) was a leader of the Communist Party USA and its four-time U.S. presidential candidate.

Background

Hall was born Arvo Gustav Halberg to Finnish parents in Cherry, a rural community on Northern Minnesota's Iron Range.
..... Click the link for more information.

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is a Marxist-Leninist political party in the United States. For approximately the first half of the 20th Century it was the largest and most widely influential communist party in the country, and played a defining
..... Click the link for more information.

John Morton (1724-1777) from Ridley Township, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania was the delegate who cast the deciding vote in favor of the United States Declaration of Independence. According to legend, he was late to the meeting, and everyone else had already voted.
..... Click the link for more information.

The United States Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies in North America were "Free and Independent States" and that "all political connection between them and the State of
..... Click the link for more information.

Rautalampi is a municipality of Finland.

It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Northern Savonia region. The municipality has a population of 3,723 (2003) and covers an area of 761.97 kmÂ² of which 213.42 kmÂ² is water. The population density is 6.
..... Click the link for more information.

Republic of Finland

This article is part of the series:
Politics of Finland

State Government
Constitution
Declaration of Independence
Executive
President (list)
Tarja Halonen

Prime Minister
..... Click the link for more information.

Northern Savonia is a region (maakunta / landskap) in eastern Finland. Kuopio is the largest city in the region.

Map highlighting the location of the Region of Northern Savonia

Historical Provinces

..... Click the link for more information.

This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

Herod_Archelaus

iPedia Free Information Center