tallenlo

Are Finns in general aware of the contribution they made to the development of the US?

There is an image of log-cabin frontier life in the US as it spread across the continent. It is usually not appreciated that the culture pictured was brought to this continent by Finns. In the mid-1600's Sweden was hoping to establish a colony along the Delaware River between the Dutch in New Amsterdam and the English in Maryland. They moved a lot of people living in Finland to populate the colony. It turns out that the culture of those people were a very good match for life in the New World and had a lot in common with that of the Native Americans. It was Finland that taught everyone else log-cabin construction and living comfortably in the wilderness. All the others were trying to hack out a small-scale version of the normal European life they knew.

Go Finns!

I am American. And believe it or not, there are still places you can claim a parcel of land, build a house and live there. A quick Google search gave me 13 places, mostly in sparsely populated communities in Kansas and Nebraska, a thousand miles of grassland in any direction. And some in Alaska, a little more like home. I suspect there are residency rules, but I don't know about citizenship.