Sisu As a central marker of Finnish-American Culture: Stubbornness beyond reason

Abstract

This article analyzes one of the most interesting and perhaps best-known characteristics of Finnishness - Sisu - stubbornness beyond reason. In the text, Finnish 'sisu' is examined from fictional points of view, as it is depicted in the central works of some chosen authors and works: namely, Lauri Anderson's Heikki Heikkinen and Other Stories of Upper Peninsula Finns; Mary Caraker's Growing Up Soggy and Elina, Mistress of Laukko; Joseph Damrell's Gift; Lynn Laitala's Down from Basswood and Paula Robbins's Below Rollstone Hill. I point out some of my notions related to Finnishness in the texts, and study the image of Finnish 'sisu' which has affected the authors' auto-images (images of the group a person belongs to), and I also investigate how this image mirrors the hetero-images (images of outside groups) of the surrounding society. Consequently, I present some of the aspects that I believe most clearly characterize the guts of Finnish immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and which concurrently have affected the identity of the authors, their texts, as well as images of life in North America.