We need a few good people to join our Board.
Maybe that’s you?
The Friends of Finland Board is designed to have nine members who work effectively, efficiently, and with clear purpose. While the commitment is significant, we can say that hours should be limited and the work inspiring. We’re prepared to nurture the people who can do this work with us–we want your involvement to be a two-way street.
We’re looking for a variety of ages, professions, and views. The Board should mirror our community. You share your skills and enthusiasm, and we will offer you an opportunity to gain non-profit experience that can feed your career or your heart.
Perhaps it’s time for you to give back. Perhaps you’re called to make a difference in this challenging time. Perhaps you are energized by creating a robust, connected community.
Our current Board members are happy to meet with you, one-on-one, if you have questions before you apply. In fact, we’d prefer that.
If this is you, please find more information here.
By: Kaare Melby
As I look out at the brand-new and beautifully crafted outdoor oven here at the Clair Nelson Center, I can’t help but think back to early 2022 when I started writing one of the grant narratives that ended up funding the construction of our new wood-fired oven. What I wrote then struck me as even more impactful now:
“Culture lives in shared space. Our ancestors were forced to share resources as a matter of survival and through that necessity, they maintained community connection and cohesion. Together they laughed, they sang, they told stories, and they shared experiences. As modernity removed the necessity of shared space, people naturally began to drift apart. Rather than a side effect of survival, our relationships became difficult to maintain. This truth has been amplified with the pandemic and an increasingly divided political culture. We now understand that shared space has to be intentionally created in order to strengthen community cohesion and maintain local culture. We also understand that people are attracted to healthy, happy, functional and cohesive communities. So we have decided to build a community hearth that can draw our community together and invite new people in.”
Relationship is at the heart of everything. We know that the bonds between individuals are what create the strength in our community, and we know those bonds are strengthened when we spend time together. Now that we have this oven, it’s time for us to find a way to create an inviting space that will help our community thrive. There are lots of ideas, from pizza night, to having a community baking day, and we are sure there are many more ideas, too! No matter how it ends up getting used, we just can’t wait to see you all together enjoying the space.
If you have a fun idea of how we can use this new oven, please let us know by giving us a call: 218-353-0300
Important: This oven does require knowledge and skill to be used, please do not attempt to use it without a trained staff member. At this point we are still figuring out a system for public use, and we will share that system with all of you once it’s ready.
If you would like to support more work like this, please consider making a donation here.
This project was made possible through generous grants from the Lloyd K. Johnson Foundation and the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB).
Dear Finland Community,
We recognize that our community is reeling from recent accusations surrounding one of our former youth night employees, Andrew Deyette. The concerns that you have shared are being taken very seriously. We are taking action to better understand what happened and how we can prevent this type of situation from happening in the future. The first step in this process is to engage in a third-party investigation to examine how past concerns with Mr. Deyette were handled. We have been guided by our legal team on how to best undertake this type of investigation, and have decided that our Director, Honor Schauland, should be put on administrative leave in order to preserve the integrity of the investigation and its outcome.
Friends of Finland is an organization that was created by the Finland community, it was created to serve the Finland community, and as an organization, our top priority is to help make Finland and its surrounding area an inviting and vibrant place. We believe that the bonds between individuals are what make up the strength of our community, and we recognize that this unfortunate situation has put a strain on those bonds. We are committed to doing everything we can to ease that tension and restore the trust that has been tested. The Clair Nelson Center and all of the programming that Friends of Finland facilitates is intended to facilitate a supportive environment, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that all aspects of our programming are delivered in a safe space.
We thank everyone who has come to us with thoughts and concerns. We know this is hard. But we also know that we can make it through this if we stick together. Our community’s strength lies in its cohesion, and people who visit are often struck by how strong our community is. We know that we collectively have the strength to overcome this issue, and we look forward to working with all of you to forge ahead to a brighter future.
By Honor Schauland
St Urho’s Day in Finland always makes me really happy. It’s the one day that I can think of where I get to see a whole lot of people that I care about, they are all usually happy, we all get a lot of hugs, and candy, the sun usually comes out, there’s all kinds of options for fun activities, we can all wear crazy costumes if we want, we close down the state highway and just have a lot of fun and smile and laugh after a long winter. It’s just great. Every time, the weekend ends and I feel so much love for everyone who was there, and I am so proud of all of us, and I feel like, “This is where I belong.” 
Right after St Urho’s weekend this year I was reading a book that was talking about how most people in the US have a very different kind of community in their lives than what I am used to – that in most places these days, people stay away from each other – they avoid interacting. When they do interact, they are fractured along identity lines of some kind. Given a choice, people only want to interact with other people who believe the same things they do (however they define that), so their community is their church, or their school, or their political persuasion, or whatever their own little niche identity group is – and that anyone they disagree with is considered the enemy. There’s no place or event that gives people a feeling of being part of a broader shared community.
Reading about this, I thought, “They don’t have St Urho’s Day.” And…they don’t.
Why not?
There are so many reasons. The answer is different depending on who you are talking to.
My answer is that we are lucky. And we should value what we have and keep it going.
Similarly, working with Crystal Bay Township over the past year on the septic issue, as well as other mutual projects at the Clair Nelson Center, I am reminded that many other communities don’t have what we have with the Center. Many small communities have some kind of community building or meeting space, but they can’t afford to staff it, so it sits empty a lot of the time. Many bigger places have a school or a library or a YMCA that serve some kind of community center kind of function, but not everyone goes to the same place to get their need for community met.
Once again, Finland is lucky. We have a township government, Crystal Bay Township, and a nonprofit, Friends of Finland, who are partnered together so that the Clair Nelson Center can be a resource to the community in whatever ways are needed at a given time.
So many different things happen here at the Center, it takes too long to describe. It needs to be experienced to make sense. And only over time does the bigger picture become clear. Over time, as people in the community attend events or stop by for information or do work or recreate together, all using the same space, amazing things happen. People get to know each other on a different level. They end up caring about each other, and they care about the Center and the land it’s on, and the town it’s in and the community that exists here, and they help each other and they keep coming back. That’s a sign of a healthy community, one that is going to continue to exist for a long time. That’s also becoming rarer and we should value what we’ve got. Change is going to happen, but Finland can create our own future while still hanging on to the important stuff, the things that make Finland Finland. Let’s not let pressure from the outside world divide us into “us” and “them.” We’re all here in Finland so that we can stand out on Highway 1 and be a little silly and smile at each other, at least one day out of the year, and sometimes more often.
If you have questions about what Friends of Finland does, or what goes on here at the Center, please stop by! There’s usually a pot of coffee and we’re happy to explain what we do or give you a rundown of all of the upcoming happenings.
Lastly, please donate if you are able. We write a lot of grants that allow us to do many amazing things, but donations help cover all of the hidden costs, rising costs and miscellaneous things that are harder to get grants for. It all adds up. Donate here.
Thanks again for all of your support!
2025 is a big year for Finland Minnesota! March 15th, 2025 will be the 50th Annual St Urho’s Celebration. The theme will be St Urho’s
Golden Year: 50 Years of Grasshoppers and Grapes. Our little committee has some big plans but we need as much help and participation as we can get.
Get involved by contacting Event Coordinator Honor Schauland using the form at the bottom of this page or calling 218-353-0300.
We want the 50th annual parade to be really special. We’re hoping folks will go all out with their parade floats. We’d love to see classic cars, recreations of favorite parade floats from past years, or weird and wonderful things we’ve never even imagined. The St Urho Committee is planning to offer a number of cash prizes for parade floats this year. We’re hoping folks will be inspired to start planning and building floats for 2025 now.
Along with that, we’d love to have a Miss Helmi reunion float or recognition of some kind for past Miss Helmi contestants. Please contact us if you are a past contestant willing to participate. In particular we have incomplete information and photos from Miss Helmi contests in the 1990s and early 2000s so if anyone has info or photos from those years, we’d love to see them or hear from you.
Similarly, we’d love to have a recognition of some kind for past Grand Marshals of the parade. Many of them are no longer with us, but we’d still love photos or info. We have pieced together some from old photos, but we have very little info on who the Grand Marshals were in the years before 2000. If you have photos or memories to share, please contact us.
We have been working diligently to digitize photos from past St Urho’s years with the idea of creating some kind of memory book. We are still hoping to do that but we could use help. Please contact us if you are interested in helping or have memories to share.
Also, if you are interested in doing something special for the 50th St Urho’s Celebration, please let us know!
Get involved by contacting Event Coordinator Honor Schauland by calling 218-353-0300 or fill out the form below to email.
Contact Honor Schauland
Please fill out this form to contact Executive Director Honor Schauland, or call 218-353-0300