Finns of Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Locations
Call Number: 977.49 Fi
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	977.49 Fi	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Scratching out a living -- Building foundations -- Keeping it clean, Yooper style -- Religion, politics, and other things to fight about -- Sooner or later, you'll be a co-operator -- It's all fun and games -- Famous Finn-dividuals -- Do you remember?
"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."-- Amazon.com.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation
Table of Contents

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Suomi in Michigan submitted by Meginator on June 19, 2021, 11:38am As the title and series precedent suggest, this book presents extensive photographic documentation of the Upper Peninsula’s Finnish community, particularly between the 1880s and 1960s. Some of the structural elements don’t quite work the way the authors intend (the chapters are ill-defined and seem to have some overlap and too many of the captions lack any sort of date), but these images do present a well-rounded view of Finnish life in the UP during this period. Readers of Finnish descent may especially enjoy finding their ancestors among the many group photographs, but the book does have broad appeal as well, as it chronicles a broad period of history in an area that is at once connected to our own but also somewhat culturally distinct. I look forward to my next visit to the UP, with my newfound appreciation for this aspect of its cultural heritage.