their souls. There was, first, that longing which William Risto described : "Even though, as Finnish-Americans, we know that Finland is poor and will remain poor, that life there is disappointing, the working day long and the pay poor, as soon as we have saved a few hundred we just have to go off to look at that frostbitten, swampy Northland." Following the impatience of waiting for it, the longing for the first glimpse of land, the arrival and the excitement and rush of the first few days, a reaction was likely to set in. Even that corner of the land which had been home began to look strange, not as it had been remembered in dreams, and there were no familiar faces, what with old friends being dead and the younger people being total strangers. It was impossible to avoid a feeling of melancholy and alienation, and when there was added to that the feeling that this was the last time one would see these landscapes of Finland, the effect became funereal. And, of course, life was different, not what one had become accustomed to in America. Jokinen has written of one Finnish-American from Duluth who became so homesick for what had become home that he went off to see an American movie, "just to get a glimpse of life at home," hurried back to Minnesota, and after a week back home felt once more that he positively would have to visit Finland again the following summer.

Finland has, of course, done its best to make these visitors welcome and to feel at home; it has been their desire to build a bridge between the new and the old homeland. There are organizations in Finland, like the Suomi Seura, whose reason for being is just that, and there are organizations in America which foster the same cause.

Sometimes this bridge building takes unusual forms, as in the project proposed to the Finnish Hunting Association in 1932 by the then Finnish Consul in Duluth, E. A. Aaltio, that the white-tailed deer, Cariarcus Virginianus, whose native habitat was Minnesota, might be successfully introduced into Finland, because of similar terrain, climate and other conditions. The suggestion was studied in Finland and considered worth trying, and K. A. Paloheimo, a Finnish businessman, while visiting the United States, came to Duluth to discuss it with the interested parties there, a group of some two dozen enthusiastic hunters. By 1934 sufficient funds had been collected and three male and two female deer procured to be sent to Finland, where businessman Rafael Haarla offered them a home on his estates.

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