Finns in the United States: A History of Settlement, Dissent, and Integration

One Culture, Two Cultures? Families of Finns in the United States in the Twentieth Century, Johanna Leinonen

285 Families of Finns in the United States One Culture, Two Cultures? Families of Finns in the United States in the Twentieth Century Johanna Leinonen This article examines changes that have taken place in the family life of Finns in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. The following two passages reflect aptly how Finnish families in the United States have changed over the course of the twentieth century. The first quote is from a memoir written by Armas Tamminen, a Finnish American who lived his childhood in a farming community in northern Minnesota in the beginning of the twentieth century: “Growing up in two cultures? What two cultures? I was just a little Finn kid, tucked safely in the warm bosom of a good-sized Finnish family in a Finnish farming community. Until I entered school, I was, at most, but dimly aware of the existence of any other culture.”1The second quote is from an interview that I conducted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2004. The Finnish-born woman who uttered the quote—I call her “Kati”—moved to the United States in the late 1990s with her American husband, “John.” When describing her family life in the United States, she explained that “we are living our own life here, there are American things and Finnish things, but it is not American life or Finnish life, it is our life.”2 The couple had met in Joensuu in eastern Finland, where they both were completing their master’s degrees. At the time of the interview, Kati and John were living in Minnesota with their two small children. In the interview, Kati emphasized how she and John combined elements from both cultures in their family life, forming a “third” culture that was neither Finnish nor American. The contrast to the depiction of family life in Armas’s quote is evident. It is clear, then, that the families of Finns in the United States have changed considerably during the twentieth century. But how have they changed exactly? And why? In this chapter, I examine these questions, showing how the transformations in the family life of Finns in the United States originate largely from the changing patterns of Finnish immigration to the country during the twentieth century. The main sources of this research include thirty-five interviews conducted with Finnish women married to Americans in Minnesota, and memoirs and other writings of Finnish immigrants in the United States. I use, for example, archival materials from the Minnesota Finnish American Family History Project, which was conducted in the 1980s and yielded a large amount of material about Finnish American families in the United States. Johanna Leinonen 286 These records are located at the Immigration History Research Center of the University of Minnesota. In addition, I analyze U.S. Census microdata from 1900 to 2000 and data from the annual American Community Survey between 2000 and 2007, as well as statistics of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from 1943 until 2008.3 What Two Cultures? The passage from Armas’s memoir reflects the life patterns of Finnish immigrant families during the peak years of Finnish immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that time, Finnish communities in the United States were lively and full of social activities , and most of the families interacted mainly with other Finns. Edward Haryn, a Finnish American living in Virginia, Minnesota, reminisced in 1980 that in his youth, Finns did not mix much with other ethnic groups: “I think we left them alone more or less.”4 Marriages across ethnic boundaries were rare; only 10 percent of Finns who married did so outside of their ethnic community.5 While it was rare for both Finnish men and women to intermarry, it seems that relationships between Finnish women and foreign men were particularly unwelcome. Finnish men sometimes actively sought to prevent romantic relationships between Finnish women and foreign men. Varpu Lindström, who has studied the social history of Finnish immigrants in Canada, quotes an interview with a Finnish woman living in Toronto: “The Finnish men set up guards by the dance hall in order to keep out the ‘German engineers.’ Sometimes there was serious trouble and fights, especially when the Finns were drunk. They just couldn’t stomach seeing a Finnish girl under the arm of some kielinen (one who speaks the [English] language).”6 These gendered norms regarding interethnic dating were not enforced only by...