Between Two Cultures: Finns in America
Keywords:
American Finns, double identity, ethnic symbols, values, world viewAbstract
What happens when a person comes to a foreign continent without an education and without a knowledge of the relevant language and culture? This is the basic question we have to ask in a case where a young Finnish man or woman moved to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century to look för a better life. The immigrant was a stranger in a strange environment where he only knew the cultural structures of his own source culture; the target culture was new and unfamiliar.
ln the following I shall examine factors connected with living in a strange culture, focusing on the immigrant's ethnic identity, values, ideas of a home region, and his views on the positive qualities of Finland and America. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out by Päivikki Suojanen, Professor of Ethnology, and Matti Suojanen, Professor of Finnish, in the United States in Florida and in Maryland. The preliminary fieldwork took place in 1985-86 and the systematic research in 1989-90. The material was gathered by using a multi-instrumental approach. Firstly, we used participant observation and theme interviews, namely we videotaped and photographed the homes of our informants and parts of their interviews. Secondly, we used a questionnaire with open and closed items. Thirdly, we conducted two written value questionnaires with open and closed questions. Forthly, we asked the informants to draw their home region and childhood home, and we asked a series of psychological questions about the informant's self image, using a contrast axis with five scales. The material has been delivered to the Memory Archives of Central Finland at the University of Jyväskylä. The study concentrated on the lives of 84 immigrants in the source and target cultures; their ethnic identity as citizens of two cultures, their value structures as well as their world views from the perspective of cultural change and acculturation. This article is based on our work Retulaatsissa Miamissa... -kasvokkain amerikansuomalaisten kanssa (Face to Face with Finnish Americans, Suojanen & Suojanen 2000).
