Finnish immigration to North America
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During the late 19th century and early 20th century, over 300,000 people from Finland migrated to the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada, in the search for a better life. While there had been a sporadic flow of immigration before the mid-19th century, the bulk of the migration did not start until about 1870.
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[edit] Background
The first Finnish immigrants to North America arrived to the New Sweden colony by the River Delaware in 1640. Finland was an integrated part of the Kingdom of Sweden at the time, and a Swedish colony in the New World was bound to include subjects from Finland as well. In two years' time, the number of Finns in the settlement had grown to fifty, and was increasing. New Sweden changed hands to Dutch control in 1655, but many Finns had already entered and the Finnish community, while small, was growing.
Among the Finnish settlers of New Sweden was Mårten Mårtensson, who came to North America in 1654 and changed his name to Morton. John Morton, the politician who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence on behalf of Pennsylvania in 1776, was his great-grandson.
Migration to North America from Finland continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was very sporadic in nature and only a few individuals and groups dared make the move. This was largely due to the long distance between Europe and America, and the difficulties associated with crossing it. However, as the Industrial Revolution began with the turn of the 19th century, bringing with it such technological innovations as railways and steam ships, these obstacles slowly began to disappear.
While the rest of Europe was industrialising, Finland, by now a Grand Duchy of Imperial Russia, was to a great extent excluded from the revolutionary process. The society was largely agrarian, and unemployment was rising, resultant from population growth and the fact that there was now little land left to cultivate in the country. America, on the other hand, possessed abundant natural resources but lacked a work force. In 1867, a severe crop failure in Finland drove masses of Finns, especially from rural Ostrobothnia, into migrating to Norway, from where they later moved to the United States and Canada.
[edit] The Great Migration
The years between 1870 and 1930 are sometimes referred as 'the Great Migration' of Finns into North America. In the 1870s, there were only 3,000 migrants from Finland, but this figure was rapidly growing. New migrants often sent letters home, describing their life in the New World, and this encouraged more and more people to leave and try their luck in America. There were also professional recruiters, or 'agents', employed by mining and shipping companies, who encouraged Finns to move to the United States. This activity was frowned upon by the authorities of the Grand Duchy, and was mostly done in secret. It was eventually brought to an end in the late 1880s by legislation in the U.S., but the decade still saw a 12-fold increase in the number of Finnish migrants compared to the previous decade, as 36,000 Finns left their home country for North America.
The movement was strengthened even further in 1899, as the Russian government started an aggressive, coordinated campaign for the Russification of Finland. Many Finns chose to escape the repression by migrating into the New World, and, during the 1900s, there were 150,000 new migrants.
Most Finns who left for America came from the impoverished rural regions of Ostrobothnia. Other prominent points of departure were Northern Savonia and the Torne Valley. Many were destined for the northern U.S. states of Michigan and Minnesota, which had climates very similar to that of Finland. The immigration of Finns gave birth to a strong Finnish American culture, especially in cities such as Duluth and Detroit, and many villages were named after places in Finland (such as Savo, South Dakota, and Oulu, Wisconsin).
90% of Finnish immigrants to America went to the United States, and only 10% to Canada. This despite the fact that the Finnish exodus took place after most of the available farmland in the U.S. was already taken and Canada's was largely still up for grabs. Because of this, many male Finnish immigrants received employment in mining, construction, and the forest industry, while the women usually worked as maids.
The migration continued well into the 20th century, until the U.S. authorities set up a quota of 529 Finnish immigrants per year in 1929. This reduced the flow somewhat, and as conditions in Finland improved, the flow effectively died down by the mid-20th century.
[edit] Return
Most Finnish migrants had planned to stay only a few years in North America, and then to return to their native land once they had become rich. However, only about twenty percent of the migrants returned to Finland. Those who did managed to import new ideas and technologies into Finland and put them into use there.
Approximately ten thousand Finns returned from the New World, not to Finland but to the Soviet Union, in the 1920s and the 1930s to "Build Socialism" in the Karelian SSSR. This took place mainly for ideological reasons, and was strongly supported by the political elite of the USSR. However as the political climate changed and ethnic republics were seen as a threat to the future of the USSR, many of these immigrants were killed in the so-called "Stalin's Purges" in 1935-1938. There is a website of deceased people in the Sadromoh mass gravesite in Karelia, where one can read entries like "Mäki, Valter Valterovits, s.1907, Minnesota, USA; suomalainen; USA:sta 1931; kirvesmies; Uhtua, Kalevalan piiri; ammuttu 15.05.1938." - Mäki, Walter, son of Walter. Born in 1907 Minnesota USA, a Finn, immigrated from USA in 1931, a carpenter, resident of Uhtua Kaleva district, shot 15.05.1938".
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Heliölä, Mikko and Ruuskanen, Esa (2000). Suuri Amerikan-siirtolaisuus (1870 – 1930). Retrieved 06 September 2005.
- Kauppi, Jorma J (2001). Suomalaisten siirtolaisuus Pohjois-Amerikkaan. Retrieved 06 September 2005.
- Swedish Colonial Society (1996). Mårten Mårtensson and his Morton Family. Retrieved 06 September 2005.
- Siirtolaisuus in the Finnish Wikipedia. Retrieved 06 September 2005.
