Follow the Sami Cultural Center through the last ten years of outreach activity with this colorful photographic display. Experience each year with a sampling of the events and people who have made the Center such an important part of the North American Sami experience. For more Center history, see our presentation “Putting Up The Lavvu” at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday. 

Through storytelling and community voices, this session invites reflection on what we inherit, what we pass on, and what it means to belong.

Practice your Finnish skills!

Come and speak Finnish in a relaxed and informal space! Grab some coffee from the tori, enjoy chatting with others, and learn more about Finnish language resources from Lily Obeda, the University of Minnesota Finnish instructor. From novice to native speaker, everyone is welcome!

‘Swedes we are no longer—Russians we do not want to become… so let us be Finns!’. This lecture addresses the birth of Finland’s Romanticism and its cultural and societal manifestations in different areas of life.

In this overview, Helena Halmari begins with the Turku Romantics and the publication of Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala. The nineteenth-century National Romantic ideas reached the areas of language, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Still today, people draw inspiration from the “Golden Age” of Finland’s art, and the Kalevala continues to inspire—from art to heavy metal.

PRESENTER

Helena Halmari is a Distinguished Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. Her recent publications include Multilingual Finland, vols. I & II (2024–25, co-edited with Lotta Weckström) and Finnish Romanticism: Language, Nationalism, and the Fine Arts in Nineteenth-Century Finland (2025, with Michael Demson). Halmari has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Finnish Studies, and currently she is Associate Editor of Brill’s Nordic Approaches to Language and Discourse book series. She also translates prose and lyrics from Finnish into English.

Check out our two Nordic Walking vendors at the Tori Nordic Fair and find out when the FREE Nordic Walking tours provided are provided (each morning and afternoon).

Jim Ojala, Duluth native, shares his personal journey from Duluth to NYC and finally to Hollywood where he is highlly regarded part of the film industry.

Ojala’s presentation will will be in the form of a fireside chat between two friends who share a common Finnish heritage and name: Jim Ojala, Hollywood producer and special effects master and Jim Ojala, Tacoma-based historian and writer. Pull up a seat by the (imaginary) fire and join Duluth native Jim Ojala for a lively, no-holds-barred Q&A fireside chat with video covering his 25-year journey through the wild FX world of special makeup and creature effects. From his attention-getting public access show in Duluth to his creation of monsters for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Where the Wild Things Are” to his work crafting masks and costumes for popular bands ranging from Slipknot to Snoop Dogg, Ojala shares intimate, behind-the-scenes stories from both the indie trenches and Hollywood soundstages. Hear how he built his own FX studio from scratch and directed music videos and commercials before returning home to the shores of Lake Superior to shoot his first feature f ilm—the eco-thriller “Strange Nature”. Ojala’s colorful career is one carved in latex, blood (fake), and a whole lot of Finnish sisu.

PRESENTER

Jim Ojala is an American special effects and makeup artist, screenwriter and film director.
Hollywood filmmaker and special effects master. His company, Ojala Productions, provides special effects for rock bands. He was born and raised in Duluth and started his career at the Duluth public access television station. James Ojala, Tacoma-based historian and authhor/co-author of a dozen books and hundreds of online articles about history rock-’n’-roll, photography, the sport of rowing, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and much more.