Ticket includes: Lunch and coffee.
Finnish American family history is an American History with its own unique geography and culture not necessarily learned while growing up. Join others interested in a day devoted to thinking about Finnish America’s family history.
Learn ways to explore and define the diverse stories that make up these histories. This all-day workshop will move beyond the DNA components in a person’s identity to emphasize instead the multi-generational experiences that make up our identities, experiences often uncovered only if a person starts to pursue family history.
Details:
9:00 Welcome and introduction
9:15 Finding your roots without the help of the PBS show or Ancestry.com:
using an object, a food, a place, a story, to start your “where do I come from?”
Presenter: James Johnson, Author
10:00 Break
10:15 Gathering materials: Interviewing people, Visiting Sites, Looking at family movies and photo albums, Family reunions.
Panel discussion: James Johnson, Marianne Wargelin, Barb Wilson, the Audience
11:00 Moving the research from your home to Finnish American family History Resources in Public Access: Libraries, museums, and archives across the USA.
Presenter: K. Marianne Wargelin, Public Historian
12:00 Break and Lunch
1:00 Attendees will choose one of two afternoon workshops, each limited to 20 participants:
1. Writing your family history or memoir
2. Using HisKi (Database of the Genealogical Society of Finland)
4:00 Conclusion
Writing your family history or memoir
Jim Johnson, Instructor
Beginning, Beginning Again, and Again:
Although people can join a writers’ group, few writers’ groups exist specifically to write family history or memoir. The afternoon will be spent doing a series of writing exercises that will help each participant get started with their own projects. How to use forms to put the narrative together. How to make it honest. How to handle uncomfortable data’ How to incorporate maps and photos. How to use personal interviews. In other words: how to make it more than dates and names, becoming, instead, something that people will enjoy reading and sharing with family and friends.
Limited to 20 people.
HisKi Workshop: Tools for researching ancestors in Finland.
Barb Wilson, Instructor
Online family trees are widely available, but the information found in them is not necessarily accurate and is often limited. This workshop will have two parts, both focusing on tools attendees can use to do their own genealogical research in the Finnish records.
• Introduction to Finnish first and last names: This session will explain how Finnish last
names changed in Finland during a person’s lifetime, as well as how immigrant names
changed in America.
• Introduction to HisKi, a free Finnish online genealogical database: HisKi is a good place to begin looking for information found in the Finnish parish records. The database includes more of these records than other searchable databases, and it offers instructions and
result labels in English.
Attendees at this workshop are encouraged to bring a computer as well as any information they already have about their immigrant ancestors. They can use this information to start a search on HisKi during this session.
Biographies of the speakers:
Barb Wilson is the current President of the Finnish Genealogy Group of Minnesota. After retirement, Barb brought her professional skills as a researcher to genealogy. She traced her family history in Finland using Finnish genealogical records, both online and in the National Archives of Finland. She has shared what she learned during this process, giving multiple presentations, including presentations at several previous FinnFests. In 2014, Barb won the Minnesota Genealogical Society’s Family History Writing Award for an article documenting her Finnish great grandmother’s life. She currently edits the English language version of a Finnish blog on researching roots in Finland.
James Johnson, a career writing teacher (Duluth public schools and the College of St. Scholastica) and poet, has published 12 books of poetry. He specializes in the use of local culture, the natural environment and family history as a source for writing and teaches classes to help people find and use their own histories as a source. Jim’s own writing almost totally comes out of his use of Finnish American history, including his own family history in Montana (father’s side) and Cloquet, Minnesota (mother’s side.) He started writing poetry as a way to bring Finnish America’s history back to life and meaning.
K. Marianne Wargelin has broad and deep personal knowledge of Finnish American communities. She grew up in three: Berkeley, CA, Fairport Harbor, OH, and Hancock, MI and spent considerable time with her grandparents who lived in Waukegan, Il. Her father’s work took the family to Finnish communities across the country, giving her further experiences with Finnish America. She became a college professor teaching cultural history and a researcher specializing in Finnish America seen in the context of the US and Northern Europe. As part of a project entitled “1983: the Year of the Finnish American Archives,” she became acquainted with the many small archival collections across the USA. She is the author of three encyclopedia articles and has published essays in journals and books.
Spend all-day Thursday (9 AM to 3 PM) immersed in speaking and learning more about the Finnish language. Lunch included.
In this intermediate Finnish seminar, we will learn how to use Finnish in speaking about both the urban and natural environment. We will explore new vocabulary about cities and nature and practice grammar constructions to use when speaking about location. Students who are at least able to make basic sentences and have some foundational knowledge of Finnish would most benefit from this class.
Instructor: Lily Obeda
Lily Obeda is the Finnish language instructor at the University of Minnesota. After beginning to study Finnish at 15 years old, she went on to live and study in Oulu, Jyväskylä, and Nokia before returning to her roots in Minnesota. She loves sharing the joy of Finnish language and culture with others through active participation… and terrible puns.
Tickets Include: Lunch
Spend all-day Thursday (9 AM to 3 PM) immersed in speaking and learning more about the Finnish language. Lunch included.
Learning Finnish can be fun! This class will start with the basics of Finnish greetings and short memorized phrases. We will then branch out to conjugating verbs and creating simple sentences and questions, so that we can spend time creating conversations about who we are and what we like to do. The day will be lots of variety, movement, songs, games, simple conversations, and repetition to help us learn the language–while having fun.
Instructor: Tiina Watts
Tiina Watts teaches Finnish at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah and has taught Finnish at Salolampi adult week programs in northern Minnesota since 2002. She also teaches several classes on Zoom and is a tutor. She received her Masters’ degree in Second Language Teaching in 2020. Tiina has lived in Finland for 5 years at different times during her youth. Her mother, born and raised in Finland, came to the US as an adult.
Tickets Include: Lunch
Friday, August 1 at 8:00 PM
Denfeld High School Auditorium in Duluth
Come and experience an inspiring night of all-Finnish classical music with the FinnFest
Symphony Orchestra, organized specifically by FinnFest USA for FinnFest 2025. Professional musicians from across the country will join members of the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra to play in this concert. Finland’s Ambassador to the US Leena-Kaisa Mikkola and other dignitaries will be in attendance.
The 2025 concert showcases Sibelius’s symphonic repertoire in this all-Finnish evening, heard together with two significant late-20th-century Finnish composers. Craig Randal Johnson will conduct.
Jean Sibelius En Saga
Kari Tikka Cello Concerto
Eino-Juhani Rautavaara Symphony, No. 1
Jean Sibelius Finlandia
Betsy Husby, Principal Cellist, Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra, will play the solo cello in the North American premiere of Tikka’s work. The 70-voice International Finnish Choir, honored in 2024 as Suomi Seura’s Expatriate of the Year, will join the orchestra in “Finlandia.”
Tikka, composer and conductor, wrote music in many forms, including the opera “Luther” performed in a North American premiere as well as numerous works for use in churches. His passing in 2022 led FinnFest to dedicate their 2023 publication, “Finnish Heritage Hymnbook” to his memory.
Historic Denfeld High School auditorium, one of Duluth’s early-20th-century architectural landmarks, will provide excellent acoustics and sightlines from all seats.
Tickets will be available soon on Eventnbrite.
FinnFest 2025 will provide live music and dances throughout the festival with performances featured at the Tori Nordic Fair and other stages. Nightly dances, Symphony Orchestra and other concerts will bring FinnFest visitors together to enjoy Nordic tunes.
- Guided by Professior Arnold Alanen. Departing from Duluth Entertainment Convention Center at 8:00 AM and return at 5:00 PM. Tour includes:
- LARSMONT SCHOOLHOUSE – Built by Finland Swedes in 1914 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
- GOOSEBERRY FALLS VISITOR CENTER – One of Minnesota’s premier state parks, located on the North Shore of Lake Superior
- LUNCH AT FINLAND HERITAGE SITE – Open-air museum and gift shop with several historic structures on site
- GRAND MARAIS – Includes visit to Sisu + Löyly Sauna
Lunch is included.