Finnish American Chip Woodcarvers

2019

English

8.1

♡ 2

Documentary

Michael Loukinen Director

Marjorie Miller as Marjorie Miller

Paavo Nurmi as Paavo Nurmi

Paul Heikkila as Paul Heikkila

Pekka Olson as Pekka Olson

The deep northern forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are home to small villages of Finnish Americans—communities carved out from the forest where Finnish language, cultural worldview, and traditional arts remain crucial to social life more than a century after immigration. In this beautiful and rugged north country, the extraordinary, ordinary descendants of Finnish immigrants still eke out modest lives to this day on old farmsteads, working with the resources they have available to them, showing their creativity and ingenuity in simply getting by and making do, and living in ways not dissimilar from their ancestors who migrated three or four generations ago.