This film will be shown at Zeitgeist Zinema 2 in downtown Duluth (222 E Superior St). The film is FREE and open to the public.
“The Summer Book,” a 2024 film, brings Tove Jansson’s much beloved1972 novel, to the screen.
The Summer Book is a 2024 drama film directed by Charlie McDowell, written by Robert Jones, and starring Glenn Close. A grandmother and her granddaughter, aged six, spend the summer on a remote island in the Finnish archipelago. The film is an homage to cottage life so beloved by Finnish people. The island’s undisturbed natural world and the warm, sunny days of summer create a backdrop for an ongoing conversation about the natural world and the meaning of life and death.
This film will be shown at Zeitgeist Zinema 2 in downtown Duluth (222 E Superior St).
“Tove” is a biography film that introduces the creator of the Moomins and the times in which the books were first composed.
“Tove” [ˈtuːve] is a 2020 Finnish biographical film about the Swedish-speaking Finnish author and artist, Tove Jansson, the creater of the Moomins. The film follows her early life from the end of World War II to the mid-1950s. The film enables people to meet the author and see the world within which the Moomins were first created as fiction, seemingly for children but, in fact, for adults as well.
The film was Finland’s 2020 entry for the Oscars.
The Nordic Center of Duluth presents the work of Finnish master printmaker Jaana Erkkilä-Hill. She is a visual artist, researcher and professor of visual arts at the University of Lapland in Finland.
The Nordic Center
23 N Lake Ave
Duluth, MN 55802
Finnish artist Jaana Erkkilä-Hill creates work that reflects the spiritual and religious experiences of life, looking beyond culture, time, and circumstance to try to access a deeply-felt and experienced connection to the spiritual. She sees her creative practice as a means to ask questions, philosophically examining what is seen and unseen. Drawing from art history, nature, and society, Erkkilä-Hill combines the everyday and the sacred, the visible and the invisible world in search of what lies at the core.
Jaana Erkkilä-Hill is a visual artist, researcher and professor of visual arts at the University of Lapland in Finland. In her more than thirty years of artistic practice she has focused on printmaking including both woodcuts and linocuts, mastering the process of layering color and imagery. In recent years her academic research has focused on artist pedagogy.
Presenter Bio: Finlandia Art Gallery Director and Curator Carrie VanderVeen.
We are offering tours of RV Blue Heron, the University of Minnesota Duluth’s research vessel on the Great Lakes. Crew members, researchers and students will show members of the public the vessel and discuss the work that is done on board. We will have scientific gear, such as our CTD/Carousel water sampler and our multi-corer sediment sampler, on the vessel’s deck so that we can illustrate how water and sediment samples are collected for researchers. Researchers will discuss the warming of the Great Lakes, the extent of microplastics on the lakes, and the growing impact of algal blooms.
A Simple And Healthy Idea! ASAHI®, the Finnish health exercise, is simple to learn, but the more you practice it, the more you will realize just how ingenious a method it is for physical and mental health.
Designed for the 21st C., Asahi draws from the timeless wisdom of Eastern martial arts, but is firmly based in modern medical science with no religious, philosophical, political or martial elements. Asahi is safe for everyone of all ages and in all states of health and is done standing (or in a sitting position) with no extra equipment.
Asahi is the simple and effective solution to the negative effects of inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle. Many chronic health issues can be alleviated by regular Asahi practice. It is also a time efficient method, because it is both a gentle workout and a mindfulness practice in one! Asahi improves leg strength, balance, coordination, flexibility, stamina and reflexes. The eye exercises built into Asahi along with slow movements and deep breathing help to calm the Vagus nerve and restore mental and physical balance. Regular repetition of Asahi’s gentle movements can be more effect than surgery for joint injuries and back pain.
In this workshop you will experience the Asahi method standing and sitting, which are equally effective. (If standing is not possible, the whole workshop can be done sitting.) We will end with a short repetition of the series in silence so you can better understand the mindfulness aspect of Asahi.
Presenter Bios: Asahi Head Trainer Margaret Vainio is an American musician, translator & health coach, who has lived in Finland for almost half a century and has gained dual citizenship. Seeing so many Americans with health issues that could be alleviated by adding movement to their life has compelled her to bring Asahi to the US. To date, she has trained about 60 US teachers and has presented Asahi at FinnFest since 2016. In addition to being an Asahi Head trainer, she also completed the 500-hr European Yoga Teacher certification in Oct. 2024.
Sharing teaching responsibilities for the Asahi Introductory Workshop at FinnFest this year will be the first US teacher trainers, who certified in January 2024: Sue Schaefer of Milwaukee, WI; Carol Curtis of Urbana, IL; Deb Wahlberg of Ironwood, MI; and Don Bode of Marquette, MI.
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.