FINNS: An Oral History

The Introduction

FINNS: An Oral History of Finnish-Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock Region

Excerpted from FINNS: An Oral History... by Patricia Kangas Ktistes, 1997, all rights reserved.

Introduction [by Patricia Kangas Ktistes]

This work, accepted in original form as a 1997 master’s thesis at Dartmouth College,  chronicles the collective American Dream of Finnish Americans in New Hampshire’s Monadnock  Region, surrounding Mt. Monadnock (3,165 feet), a national natural landmark. The region remains  rural, comprising small towns with 18^th-century colonial architecture, 19^th-century brick mills, new  industry, a few revitalized main streets, some family farms, and even a little suburban sprawl.

People interviewed for this project have made or currently make their homes in Dublin,  Greenville, Jaffrey, New Ipswich, Peterborough, and Rindge, New Hampshire, or nearby  Massachusetts border towns. As with any oral history, what you read is what sources wanted to  express when interviewed. A decade has passed since the thesis was submitted and perspectives may  have changed. Thus these pages contain only a snapshot of the community. They do not represent  unassailable fact, the whole truth, or explain all aspects of Finnish-American life.

My goal in designing this project was threefold. The first was expository—delineate the  subject community’s elements of similarity and diversity. The second was interpretive—illustrate these  elements encountering one another as well as mainstream American [dominant] culture. The third was  to offer a variety of viewpoints from both insiders and outsiders. 

The term “Finn” is used as those within the community use it, which differs from usage in  Finland. In Finland, one refers to an individual as a “Finn” and to the language as “Finnish.” “Finnish”  also describes people, places, or objects, such as Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, Finnish Lapland, or  Finnish crystal. In the Monadnock Region, while an individual “a Finn,” the adjective “Finnish” often is abbreviated, i.e., “growing up a Finn kid” or living in “Finn District.” Speaking Finnish, particularly  among elders, is referred to as “speaking Finn,” or “talking Finn.” Throughout the interviews, people  refer to both natives of Finland and those residing in the Monadnock Region as “Finns.” Wherever this  may cause confusion, the term “native Finn” describes a person born and residing in Finland.

As the interviewer, my own place within the community was that of a child growing up in a  family during the post-World War II baby boom. My father had been born at his family’s New  Ipswich, New Hampshire, farm of immigrant parents although his elder brothers were born in the old  country. My mother was born in Hancock, Michigan, where many of her relatives still reside, but  moved at age four with her family to New Ipswich. Her parents—first cousins—were children of  immigrants from Ylivieska, Finland. 

During World War II and subsequent decades, the lives of many Monadnock Region residents  became caught up and re-directed by deployment to foreign shores, the Cold War; protest over prayer  in public schools; growing consumer confidence; technological advances; dwindling family farms;  mass-media images defining what it is to be “American;” Vietnam and the ‘generation gap;’ the “Pill;”  and more. In the following pages, people describe the effects of these cultural crosscurrents upon  themselves, their families and friends, and their society.

 I began contemplating such social shifts when my own family—father, mother, two daughters,  two sons—left New Hampshire in 1967, seeking economic opportunity in working-class Reading,  Pennsylvania. For a few years, we experienced the interesting confusion of a multi-ethnic mill town  during the era of Counter-culture, black power, and the Women’s movement. Transported from rural  Appleton Academy (300 students) to Reading Senior High School (3,000 students), I found myself explaining where I had come from to curious classmates who had not grown up with Finns.  

By 1970 our family returned to New Hampshire, where I found the atmosphere in the old  community unsettling. I sensed the Finns were fading as a cultural force but could not define why. My  own generation had prided itself on, joked about, or held grudges against our ethnicity but we had  assumed that the Finnish influence would, like the air, always be there.

Wherever I lived or worked  during ensuing decades, I encountered non-Finns’ fascination with the idea of a close-knit Finnish  community. For years, such interest on the part of outsiders seemed ironic because many Monadnock Finns considered their subculture unworthy of scholarship. Thus I wavered in my commitment to this  project, attempting to structure it as a research paper before re-framing it as an oral history.  Yet orality, the act of Finns telling the world about themselves, should give us cause for pause.  The Finnish language closely related to Estonian and distantly to Hungarian, historically endured a  struggle to be heard within Finland’s power circles before the 20^th century. Finnish was not the  language of high culture, administration, and jurisdiction when Finland was ruled by Sweden or  Russia. The Finnish national folk epic, The Kalevala, existed within regional oral traditions for ¹ centuries before being compiled and published in the mid-19^th century. 

Dominant cultural practices also affected the speaking of Finnish within the Monadnock  region in the 1920s. Native Finns now appear fascinated that Monadnock Region seniors speak a  quasi-poetic, archaic Finnish. When my father and his brothers were children, speaking Finnish was  forbidden on the grounds of Number One School, where they nevertheless were allowed to bring their  dog every day. This situation, and the eagerness of immigrants to assimilate, contributed to their  reluctance to teach us this lyrical dialect. My father couldn’t understand why I wanted to learn ‘a dead  language.” My generation laments their failure to teach us Finnish at an early age, when it would have  been natural for us to acquire it. However, a few dedicated young Monadnock Region parents  currently study Finnish and are passing it down to their children.

The Monadnock Region’s ethnic Laestadian (Apostolic Lutheran) churches continued to  conduct services in Finnish well into the 1960s partly because, as a native Finnish theologian explains,  “the Finnish language is [to Laestadian Lutherans] the holy language as Latin is to the Catholics.”² While not all Monadnock Region Finns are Laestadians or even religious, virtually all have either had  family who attended an Apostolic Lutheran Church at some point or otherwise felt the influence of this  spiritual movement.

Matti Klinge, “Finland: from Napoleonic Legacy to Nordic Cooperation,” chap. in The Finnish tradition: ¹ Essays on Structures and Identities in the North of Europe (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993), 109-111. 

 Pekka Raittila, The Roots and Development of the Laestadian Movement in Finland, trans. Elmer Yliniemi ²(Minneapolis: Inter-Lutheran Theological Seminary, 1982

To some non-Finnish residents of the region, Monadnock Finns appear remarkable only in  their homogeneity. Conformity purportedly remains characteristic of Finns in Finland and this ³ perhaps influenced the Monadnock Finns’ image as clannish and standoffish, turning a collective blind  eye to social progress. The following stories reveal sufficient diversity to both challenge and provide  context for this stereotype. 

Understanding the Monadnock Region Finns requires open-mindedness about such enduring  institutions as Apostolic Lutheranism, a dominant spiritual force. Apostolic Lutheranism, a Laestadian  Lutheran sect, is a Pietist movement that emerged as a religious and temperance revival in the 1840s  from Lapland’s Tornio River Valley, straddling the border of Sweden and Finland. Its founder, ⁴ university-trained botanist Lars Levi Laestadius, was among several theologians who led revivals  through Scandinavia and Finland during the three centuries after the German Reformation.

Lars Levi Laestadius

Laestadius’ mother was Lapp or Saami, the indigenous name preferred by this group for  themselves and their language. Among the Lapland Saami, Laestadianism flourished throughout the  mid-19^th century. Current scholarship on the Saami sometimes mourns the loss of indigenous culture  in the wake of religious reforms although others credit Laestadius with helping to preserve the culture  through encouraging establishment of literacy in the Saami language.⁵

Apostolic Lutheran Church histories point out what is not always noted: that many Saami  suffered devastating effects of alcoholism and alcohol abuse prior to the Laestadian revivals. They  contend that, in some Saami communities, Laestadianism virtually eliminated alcohol consumption  and such related problems as theft of reindeer and loss of livelihood; neglect of children; and sexual  promiscuity. In their place, Laestadius established sobriety, personal responsibility, stability, and  education. Through this transformation, some cultural traditions may have been irretrievably altered ⁶ or lost. 

 Anita Peltonen, “The Finnish character,” Insight Guides: Finland, ed. Doreen Taylor-Wilkie (Boston: ³ Houghton Mifflin, 1994; second reprint), 24 (page reference is to reprint edition). 

 Hepokoski, Warren H., Lars Levi Laestadius and the Revival in Finland (Culpeper, Va.: By the author, April ⁴ 1993; reviewed and corrected edition, June 29, 1995), 19-23. 

 Yli-Kuha Kari, The Saami (SOC.Culture.Nordic, 1996), ⁵  Hepokoski, Lars Levi Laestadius and the Revival in Finland, 24-26. ⁶

Contemporary Laestadians (‘Apostolic Lutherans’ or ‘Apostolics’) continue to discourage  alcohol consumption and encourage high personal moral standards. They discourage such pursuits as  dance, film, haute couture, certain genres of secular music, mainstream television, theatre, and certain  types of organized sports, although exceptions exist. For example, some Laestadians may own a  television and DVD player for viewing educational materials without ever watching a commercial, sit com, or Super Bowl game. Some Laestadians avoid television as well as use of such media as slide  projectors, video cameras, and DVD players. However, many seem as enamored of information  technology and such practical communication tools as the Internet as Finns in Finland profess to be. ⁷ 

Laestadians often identify themselves as socially and politically conservative and in many  instances reject values of ‘consumer’ society. Their leaders encourage congregations to dress and live  simply. Women within the culture do not use obvious cosmetic products. They wear little if any  jewelry and do not read magazines focusing on celebrity lifestyles, weight loss, sex, fashion, home  décor, and pop culture. Laestadian women traditionally raise large families, are skilled in domestic  arts, and often home-school their children, co-manage family businesses, and/or volunteer in the  church and community. In recent years some have launched entrepreneurial ventures or pursued higher  education.  

Laestadian men traditionally work hard, often apprenticing in construction-related firms, then  find employment within an entrepreneurial venture. Men often serve as the public face of the family  and assume responsibility for religious education and church leadership.  

The New Ipswich Apostolic Lutheran church is part of a national federation of similar  congregations, although in earlier decades governance of major administrative and spiritual affairs was  through elders. One of New Hampshire’s more exclusive Laestadian congregations, the First Born  (Esikoinen), maintain a more traditional structure in that the First Born traditionally have been  governed by elders in Swedish Lapland. Prior to World War II, Monadnock Region Laestadians also ⁸ 

Developing a Finnish Information Society: Decision in Principle, Council of State, Finland (Helsinki: ⁷ Painatuskeskus, 1995), 1-20. 

Raittila, The Roots and Development of the Laestadian Movement in Finland, 74. ⁸

maintained closer ties with elders in Sweden and Finland. Decades of establishment in America shifted  control to American congregations.  Within the Monadnock Region, the Independent Apostolic Lutherans (‘Independents’ or  ‘Pollaris’ [Pollarilaiset]) are not nationally federated, though they are Laestadians. This church was  co-founded in New Ipswich by a group that included my paternal and maternal grandparents, who  separated from the main Apostolic church in the 1930s. Laestadian Lutherans of both groups maintain  close ties with Midwest Finnish-American communities as many stories illustrate.  

Although outsiders tend to lump all Finnish Americans, regardless of religious and political  preferences, into one camp, all Monadnock Region Finns are not Laestadians nor do they identify  themselves by their spirituality. As Oiva Anderson, one non-Laestadian Finn, phrased it, “We’re not all  from the Northwest corner.” Some sources married into the Finnish community; others (the culture  watchers) interacted with Monadnock Region Finns through work, school, or community life.  

The Monadnock Region Finns brought ancestral memories and experiences in many places as  they established lives free of political oppression, economic subjugation, and state ownership of land.  Sources interviewed offered far more material than could be used in this version. Many others  generously agreed to share their stories although I was unable to incorporate them all. I hope the  representative sampling of stories that are included help create a vivid picture as the Monadnock  Region Finns tell us who they are, where they came from, and how their community is evolving.  

-New London, New Hampshire, USA, May 1997  

-Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA, 2007  

-Rockport, Massachusetts, USA, 2022

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