Recent Donation from Finlandia Foundation National Bolsters Library of Congress Collection of Finnish Americana

This blog post is co-authored by Troy Smith, Nordic Area Reference Librarian; Clinton Drake, Reference Librarian; and Ashley Dickerson, Cataloging and Acquisitions Specialist for Finland and the Baltics.

Of the 200,000 Finns who immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1914, many settled in Michigan, particularly in the state’s Upper Peninsula. It was here, in the town of Hancock, that members of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church founded Suomi College in 1896. Suomi is Finnish for Finland, and so the institution would later be called Finlandia University.

When Finlandia announced its plans to stop enrolling students in March 2023, it was the only Finnish-heritage college or university in the United States. Suddenly, its library collections, archives, and museums were in jeopardy. What would become of these essential expressions of the Finnish American experience? Were they to be divided up into lots at auction and dispersed to the four winds?

A tragedy of this sort might have occurred had it not been for the Finlandia Foundation National (FFN), which describes itself as “the premier Finnish American cultural organization.” As the umbrella for almost 60 chapters/affiliates in the District of Columbia and 25 states, FFN is committed to preserving Finnish American traditions and maintaining an ongoing exchange between the United States and Finland. FFN’s offer to assume responsibility for the beleaguered university’s cultural property came out of this mission.

In June 2023, the university accepted this offer, and FFN collected funds from over 900 donors, which included both institutions and private persons. FFN now presides over the Finnish American Heritage Center, the periodical The Finnish American Reporter, and the Finnish American Folk School, as well as a museum, an art gallery, and a bookstore. Anne-Mari Paster, President of FFN, describes this undertaking “as absolutely compatible with why Finlandia Foundation was founded 70 years ago. We are here to preserve our roots in Finland, and at the same time to build on that connection with the current and future generations. We consider this new purpose an honor and a duty.”

Not all of the books accessioned by the Finlandia Foundation from Finlandia University were unique. When a sizable number of these duplicate or otherwise unwanted volumes were offered to the Library of Congress, Reference Librarian Clinton Drake drove up to Hancock to bring these scarce items back to Washington, D.C. Nordic Area Reference Librarian Troy Smith then checked the donations against the Library of Congress catalog and selected promising titles not already in the Library’s holdings. Drake found one of these titles particularly interesting: a 1935 copy of Lainsuojattoman Kosto (shown below), a Finnish translation of the 1911 North American adventure novel Philip Steele of the Royal Mounted by James Oliver Curwood. 

This translation was published by Werner Söderström as part of its “10 markka” series, named for the price of 10 Finnish markka. Like American “dime novels,” this series included adventure stories with simple plots and concrete imagery appealing to a broad audience. Produced on low-quality wood pulp paper, mass consumption was prioritized over endurance, as this acidic paper quickly becomes brown and brittle. The back cover reads, “Two new releases every month… Once you read one, you’ll immediately want more!” Fiction translations can provide an opportunity to explore cross-cultural connections.

In 1889, the first North American adventure stories by the Frenchman Oliver Gloux and the Englishman Mayne Reid were translated into Finnish. Although their novels were inspired by visits to the US, Finnish readers assumed the authors were also American. According to Durham and Mustanoja in American Fiction in Finland: An Essay and Bibliography, “After Jack London…the first authentic American writer of adventure stories to snare the Finnish reader…was James Oliver Curwood, whose The Honor of the Big Snows arrived in Finland in 1912. The Finns, it seems, refuse to tire of Curwood, for after having gone through twenty-seven titles in eighty-five editions, he was still being printed as late as 1957.”

James Oliver Curwood (1878-1927) was born in Owosso, Michigan, and gained fame for his adventure stories based on his travels in Alaska and Northwest Canada. Many of his 33 books fall within the “Northern” literary genre, which is like the American Western, but with regional adaptations such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police (“Mounties”) instead of sheriffs and French Canadians in place of Mexicans as “primitive” or “exotic” archetypes—both genres include Indigenous characters. Northerns gained popularity during the Great Klondike Gold Rush (1896) and peaked during the interwar years. A 1911 review of Steele of the Royal Mounted commented that this “new country [is] just as fascinating as our own [American] western frontier used to be.”

The wilderness is a dominant theme in Finnish literature. According to Durham and Mustanoja, “Adventure stories and outdoor life go together, and it would be difficult to find a country where the people were more fond of the outdoors than are those in Finland who literally take to the woods and lakes at every opportunity.” Curwood stated in The Writer, “I was expelled from high school because I loved nature too well… During the three months of each year which I spend in the wilderness I plot a new novel in my head while I am gathering material for it… The wilderness gives me almost everything, almost all my characters. They are drawn directly from life.” For Finns, Curwood’s focus on the wilderness was a natural fit.

Curwood knew of Finnish immigrants to North America. His book The Country Beyond is likely set in the rural area surrounding Thunder Bay, Ontario, which claims the largest population of Finnish descent outside of Finland. The main character walks around a recently burned-out forest, desperately hoping to find his love interest at the next settlement where “more than once Father John had preached to the red-cheeked women and children and the clear-eyed men of the Finnish community that thrived there.” He finds it destroyed: “Death must have come here…[a]nd if it had fallen upon the Finnish settlement, with its strong women and its stronger men, what might it not have done in the cabin of the little old gray Missioner—and Nada?”

The cover of the 1935 translation of Steele of the Royal Mounted was created by Finnish painter, illustrator, and cartoonist Eeli Jaatinen who illustrated the entire “10 markka” series, which included other American adventure authors like Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Rex Beach, Edward S. Ellis, and Harold Bell Wright. The book’s translator, Aaarne Lehto, spent several years in the US as a child.  According to the 1903 ship manifest for his family’s arrival, their American contact was Rev. Frans Evert Blomberg, pastor of the Finnish church in Brooklyn. Brooklyn’s “Finntown” centered around Sunset Park and once had a population of nearly 20,000 Finns. One can wonder how Lehto’s time in the US affected his translation.

The Library’s copy is inscribed with “For Laura 9/1-35 / Helsinki, Finland,” and “For Laura from Penti.” The journey of Laura’s book from Finland to Hancock illustrates  the enduring relationships among the Finnish diaspora. From Curwood’s pen through Lehto’s translation, we can better understand how average Finnish readers of the early twentieth century viewed North America. One Finnish immigrant woman exclaimed: “I had imagined America to be a beautiful country where aesthetic qualities are on a par with money… At once on my arrival I was bitterly disappointed when I reached this mining town. The companies had heaped recklessly mountain-like rock piles in the neighborhood of residence sections… As I contrasted conditions here with those in my native country I began to cry.”

Ashley Dickerson received over 70 monographs and serial volumes from the FFN donation in the Scandinavian, Baltic, Central Germanic section of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA), which acquires materials for the Library of Congress’ collections and catalogs them before making them available for patron use. In the FFN donation, the Library acquired what is jokingly being called “the long-awaited LC copy” of Happy Depression on the Iron Range by H.E. “Finny” Lager, shown below.

Dr. Harold “Finny” Edwin Lager (1924-2000) was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. He graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry in 1947. His dental practice, both private and military, spanned 39 years. While being a naval veteran and a successful dentist, Dr. Lager also had a passion for history.

Happy Depression is Dr. Lager’s way of retelling oral histories about the Iron Range during the Great Depression with “a spoonful of sugar.” He believed that to tell history is to tell it in an honest and personal way as opposed to how history classes are taught in school with a huge textbook that may not connect or resonate with the audience. Happy Depression covers a time during the Great Depression in which the community of Slavic, Italian, and Finnish immigrants of the Iron Range went through struggles and hardships but adapted and found ways to have joy and strengthen the bonds between neighbors to get through hard times. From the community skating rink teens and children would go to after chores, to the sauna culture that Finnish immigrants brought with them, one gains a sense of life and community in the Iron Range during the 1920s and 30s.

The pathway Happy Depression took to be accepted into the Library of Congress collections is a story of how the Library of Congress and Copyright work together. While cataloging this book, a Copyright certificate number was found printed inside the back cover. By working with the Copyright office, specifically Acquisitions and Deposits, we were able to piece together what could have happened to a copy that the Library of Congress normally would have received for its collections. In 1979, Dr. Lager submitted an unpublished copy of Happy Depression to Copyright. There are various reasons why an applicant would submit an unpublished work, and this in itself is not unusual. But for unknown reasons, a published version was never received. After over 40 years, thanks to the kind donation from the Finlandia Foundation National, the Library of Congress was able to receive its first copy of Happy Depression on the Iron Range for patrons and curious minds.

Through its donation, FFN has helped to preserve the historical record of Finnish America at the national level, where it will engage, inspire, and inform Library patrons for generations to come.