Jonathan's Journal — Jonathan Riikonen
It is actually quite notable the fact that none of the bigger cities with early Finnish communities in America have a Finnish name. The biggest by population might be Oulu, Wisconsin, which has only 560 residents.
One of those Finnish settlements is Astoria, Oregon, which was incorporated 150 years ago in October 1876. The oldest western Finnish town was named after the famed businessman John Jacob Astor from New York City.
Astoria stands on the southern side of the mighty Columbia River delta, known for its imposing four-mile-long iron bridge connecting to Megler, Washington across the river. This July marked 60 years since its opening. A preserved Finnish Hall built in 1886 and an old Uniontown area remind visitors and locals of the Finnish heritage.
Today the city of 10,000 spreads over 10 square miles, thus it has 1,000 people per square mile. Astoria has more than 200 years of history. Founded in 1811, it is the oldest city to the west of the Rockies. Investor and businessman Astor set up a fur trading post with his American Fur Company. The Lewis and Clark expedition had actually camped there five years earlier. Later the company was acquired by Canadian-British trading companies. But Astoria was years to follow amid territorial politics in Oregon and the U.S. West.
In the latter quarter of the 1800s the biggest immigration group were Chinese laborers followed by Finnish and Swedish-speaking Finns. They were brought there for their logging and wooden house and shipbuilding experience and lucrative salmon prospects. When the first Finns arrived, they soon wrote home and lured others to follow.
By 1905 there were 2,027 Finns in town or 18 percent of the population, making them the largest foreign-born group in Astoria. According to statistics, today about 600 Astorians consider themselves as Finns while one quarter have some Finnish blood and genes back to a few generations. Meanwhile today there are about 270 people with Chinese heritage.
While I did my training in California at Minton Company, there was also an employee named Eldon Jerijarvi. He was born in Astoria, and often at breaks or weekend evenings when I sat at his kitchen counter sipping soda and watching him drink shots of vodka, he used to reminisce about his youth in Astoria. He was extremely proud of his heritage, and I heard many stories that took place in what was at that time a very Finnish town. Eldon’s father had moved to America at the turn of the 20th century from the Norwegian side of Lapland where they spoke also Finnish and Sami. In his last name Jeri is unknown, but jarvi means lake.
Sometimes we would call his sister Sylvia in Astoria, since she loved to practice her Finnish, which was much better than Eldon’s. He knew only Finnish greetings, many swear words and some basic vocabulary. But he always sang a short song verse that did not really make sense. It went translated like this: “Chirpy, chirpy the colorful bird is flying on a tree branch.”
Later when I lived in Vancouver, B.C. and once had a Finnish lady friend visiting, we drove down to Astoria to see Sylvia. The first thing she wanted to do was make a call to Eldon. Obviously, they were very close siblings. Sylvia indeed spoke decent, but somewhat dated Finnish. We went to tour the Finnish sites. In the 1990s there were still many second-generation Finnish speakers left, but today there are fewer and fewer.
I tried to google Sylvia, with a married name Roberts and indeed found a short mention from The Astorian newspaper that she had passed away about a decade ago. Also, according to the paper, her son Dan Roberts had died two years ago. Eldon and Sylvia had three other siblings also. If someone from Astoria reads this, perhaps they knew Sylvia Roberts, nee Jerijarvi.
The most famous Astoria-born Finn must be Maila Nurmi, who had remarkably shiny black hair for a fair-skinned Finn. She became a well-known Hollywood witch and vampire actress and also had her own “Vampira” show in the 1950s. I wrote about her four years ago, but to refresh memory, she was born in 1922 to Finnish parents in Gloucester, Massachusetts, but her journalist father later moved the family to Astoria.
Their original last name was Syrjaniemi and grandfather Onni was born in Haapajarvi, Finland in 1889. Maila had danced and acted in high school productions, and after graduation she went to work in a local fish cannery. Soon she was bored and after having collected enough money she headed down to Los Angeles and changed her name to Nurmi after legendary runner Paavo Nurmi had toured America to promote the Finnish war effort. Maila worked in clubs and landed small extra parts in some films.
One day at a masquerade party she was wearing a vampire costume; she was discovered and offered movie parts and eventually her own show, which ran for two seasons. Later on, she became one of the girlfriends of Orson Welles and had an out-of-wedlock son, while Welles went to marry Rita Hayworth. She had many more film roles and a colorful life, but she is always remembered as a genuine Vampira.
There were some other famed Finns also, like Rosa Emilia Clay. She was born in Namibia and adopted by Finnish missionaries who brought her back to Finland. In 1911 Clay moved to Astoria and became a drama and choir director.
Santeri Nuorteva was a socialist and central character in organizing labor unions while Finns were fighting for safer working conditions and fairer wages in Washington and Oregon timber industries. Julia Ruuttila later became a famed political activist and labor journalist promoting all the efforts for better life not just for Finns, but for all working-class people.
Matti Valentin Huhta, aka T-Bone Slim, born in Ashtabula, Ohio, was a well-known hobo or wanderer, writer, poet and songwriter who lived for a while in Astoria working in the timber and fishing industries. I have covered his life in my article about famous Finnish hobos some years ago. Since he was bilingual, he wrote to both the Finnish “Industrialisti” and English “Industrial Worker” newspapers. Huhta is still revered in American folk song circles, and his pieces like “The Popular Wobbly” and “Lumberjack’s Prayer” are well recognized pieces.