2nd Finglish trip August 2005 #9
On the way from Duluth Minnesota USA to Thunder Bay in Canada there is a small community named Finland, which was founded when Finns came in 1895 to work in logging in the area. Emma Leskinen gave the name Finland to the newly built railway station. Finland, Minnesota still has an active co-operative store, which celebrated its centennial in 2013.
5802 Nikolai Road, Finland. Bob Nikolai and his sister are running a garage sale. He also begins to offer the house for sale. It's their old home, the estate of their mother, which now needs to be sold. In the 1940s, the family paid a logging company 1,400 dollars for the house and lot; real-estate agents have now evaluated it 340,000 dollars.
”My mother still used to heat this,” says Bob Nikolai, leaning against the wall of the sauna. Bob is a third-generation Finnish-American. He understands Finnish, because his grandparents, with whom he was close, never learned English. Finland, Minnesota is a logging area, and Bob's grandmother was a cook at a logging camp.
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