vicinity of Alten there were in 1714 about twenty Finnish families, salmon fishermen for the most part, who had moved there from the new Tornio and Muonio river valley settlements. In 1756, statistics from Norway's Finnmark (Ruija) showed that there were 642 "Finnish and Lapp" families, and the 1799 figures from the same area spoke of about 3,500 "Finnish and sea-going Lapp" families, while there were no more than 2,000 Norwegians themselves there at the time. During the first half of the nineteenth century the Finns continued to move into the area in numbers. Ruija had become the promised land, where no one had to live in misery: the people of the Muonio and Kemi river regions had been unable to resist the lure of Norway, and the advice, "Go, lad, to Ruija!" had not fallen on deaf ears. In the years from 1825 to 1865 the number of Finns there grew from 780 to 5,862. The Finns in East Tromsö and western Finnmark seem to have been reasonably satisfied with their lot, but those in eastern Finnmark were disappointed: a bare, mountainous desert where even grass and shrubs did not grow (Hammerfest and Vardö-Vadsö.) The area around Kaafjord was also a gloomy place, hemmed in by mountains, to which a copper mine opened by the English had lured hundreds of Finns : 439 of them are said to have been living there in 1855. In this desolate region the work was hard and exhausting, but in the 1860s, when the ore began to give out rapidly, the population began to drift away just as rapidly: 15 representatives of American mines were able to offer better wages, and since there was always the danger of work coming to an end altogether in Norway, their persuasion brought good returns. Furthermore, the Norwegians themselves had begun to make things hard for workers from neighboring countries by passing laws favoring the natives. 16 The westward movement had begun and rapidly assumed significant proportions.

The first to come was a group of 35 men, which arrived in Upper Michigan in 1865. When the Calumet and Hecla firms found rich silver lodes in 1866, the recruiting of foreign miners was intensified : the Scandinavians had proved themselves strong and tough workers, and the various mines competed for their services : in 1868, some 675 persons left Tromsö. It is difficult to ascertain just how many Finns moved via Norway to the United States, but Kolehmainen in his studies has concluded that in the years 1864 to 1865 approximately a third of the Finnish immi

15. John Kolehmainen, Suomalaisten siirtolaisuus Norjasta Amerikkaan. Fitchburg, Mass., 1946. p. 7.

16. E. Sulkanen, op. cit. p. 14.

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