Is Sisu Alive and Well Among Finnish Americans?

William R. Aho, Ph.D.

Adapted from Is Sisu Alive and Well Among Finnish Americans? pgs. 196-205 in Karni, Michael G. and JoanneAsala, co-editors, The Best of Finnish Americana, Penfield Press, Iowa City, Iowa, 1994.

Will the Real Sisu Please Stand Up?

Sisu is that tough-to-translate, near-spiritual quality which Finns everywhere seem to know about, believe theypossess and practice. Eino Friberg once told me that Sisu is “. . . much more than fortitude. It’s and old charac-terization used by the Finnish people, maybe for the last ten thousand years.” Sisu first came to my attention inabout 1950 when I read Oskari Tokoi’s autobiography bearing that title. John Kohlemainen’s introduction tothat volume quotes Jean Sibelius as comparing Sisu to “a metaphysical shot in the arm, which makes a man dothe impossible” and quotes Hudson Strode and David Hinshaw as viewing Sisu as “ . . . a kind of inner fire orsuperhuman nerve force . . . Courage, tenacity, stubborn determination, energy and a will and an ability to getthings done.”

In his 1987 novel, Indian Country, Philip Caputo wrote: “She’d begun to question if she loved Chris anylonger. The doubt alone seemed proof that she did not; maybe she was sticking with him out of sisu, a grittyperseverance, which was not to be discounted as a marital virtue, but it wasn’t love.” Later, wrote Caputo, inthis novel about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, “Sisu: a Finnish word for guts, grit, determination, thecapacity to endure any hardship, was the virtue that had given Mom the strength to raise a difficult daughter onher own, as it had given Mom’s parents the courage to survive the Great Depression after the lumber barons haddeserted the UP for fatter pickings out West, leaving the unemployed loggers to get along any way they could.Mom had said that Grandpa used to poach deer and dynamite lakes for fish so his family could eat, but he nevergave up. That was Sisu.”

And finallly: “What she’d lacked was the nerve to act on her visions of another life in another place. Thatwas the distaff side of Sisu. If you had the capacity to endure, you naturally tended to endure, even when endur-ance had no point or purpose. You endured for the sake of it, which, she supposed, explained why she hadn’tended her marriage.” This reminds me of what an old Finnish farmer in Embarrass, Minnesota told me aboutSisu: “It’s stubbornness beyond reason.”

All of this leads to some questions: Is all Sisu good, or is there bad Sisu? And, Is Sisu always good foreveryone, in every situation, or can it at times be counterproductive and/or inappropriate?

Some poetic insight on these kinds of questions is offered by Aili Jarvenpa’s poem, Immigrant Child, theplea of an immigrant child, or maybe just the child of immigrants, trying to blend into the so-called melting pot,but feeling the unwelcome pull of her ancestral roots:

Immigrant Child

By Aili Jarvenpa

I reach backto my bilingual rootsand catalogue theminto fragmented imagesof my being,part captive of a landI’d never seen,but drained

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by the agoniesof its famines, warsand tyrannies heaped uponmy not too ample back.In my dreamI struggle to mergeinto my melting potas my ancestors chantSisu ! Sisu! Sisu!And I protest:I’m not brave!I’m not brave!Try to removetheir sign of sisufrom my psyche,Try, but fail againto provethat my life is mineand their lives were theirs.

A letter to the editor in the July 1992 issue of The Finnish American Reporter by a woman from Minneapo-lis about the serious illness and pain endured by her father throws further light on the dilemma of Sisu. Shewrote that you have to endure until the bitter end because this deep core inside you is a root that lives regardlessof your choice. Seeing her father in intensive care she wrote, “I looked at him with tears in my eyes and felt ananger rise up at this Finnish word Sisu. I would like to think that when my going gets tough someday, I couldjust choose to give up and avoid the pain, but I suppose this damn Sisu is inside me too.”

That thought, that plea, like that of the immigrant child in Jarvenpa’s poem, should at least give us reason tostop and reflect on the humaneness of the idea of Sisu: Is it a double-edged sword? When should we, can we,exercise the freedom of choice to give in, give up, or let go? Is hanging in there always a virtue, the best choice,the wisest choice? This leads us to the question of the nature of Sisu. Is it real, or merely a myth?

And can we say, or merely? Are myths mere? Or do they not for many people serve as moral, spiritual, reli-gious, social, psychological models and guides? Still further quetions arise: Do other individuals and ethnicgroups also have the quality of Sisu, even though they may not refer to it as such? Or do we Finns think that wehave a corner on it? Have we just cornered the word, the name and the power that goes with it, which of coursecan be considerable? Does any of this matter? Maybe not, because we can just accept that people of Finnishheritage believe that a quality we call Sisu exists and it does affect what we do and how we do it. It is real andnot merely a myth if it has real consequences, like many other powerful, motivating beliefs: religious andpolitical, for example. Perception is realitly.

A few more questions arise, even if we try to focus on the belief and behavioral level. Do all Finns believein Sisu and behave accordingly? Everywhere and always? We can believe but not follow up on it in our behav-ior, or behave in a determined way without any real belief in a quality called Sisu.

And how about Finns in Finland? Do we Finnish-Americans talk more about Sisu, portray it on T-shirts,hats, bumper stickers, coffee cups, name our dogs, cars, trucks, boats and even children (yes!) Sisu,? While thepeople in Finland do fewer of these but act on it, live it out more? Are you less a Finn if you don’t have Sisu?Less worthy? A bad Finn? Should you be ashamed?

It should be clear by now that we do need a good deal of organized, systematic scientilfic research to dis-cover the scope and depth of Sisu, geographically and situationally, and the depth and strength of both thebeliefs and behaviors surrounding and emanating from Sisu.

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What Do We Know?

During the summer and fall of 1991 conduced a national mail survey of what second and later-generationFinnish-Ameiricans believe and do about selected aspects of their ethnic heritage and identity. There were 447responses. I compared responses of the second to the third and later generations to discover whether or not theydiffer in the ethnic identity.

Since the idea of Sisu seems to be prevalent among Finnish-Americans, I assumed that this concept mightbe a focal point for Finnish-American identity and that the respondents would know of it and have some beliefsabout and examples of it. Specificallly, I was looking for answers to several basic questions:

1) Do the resondents think of themselves as Finnish-Americans?2) What do they think Finnish-Americans are like?3) Do they believe that Finnish people have Sisu?4) How do they define Sisu and what examples of it do they give?5) At what age were they first exposed to the idea of Sisu?6) Have their own behaviors or attitudes been affected by their belief in Sisu?7) Have they passed the idea of Sisu on to their children?

Some Background

Very little empirical research has been done to explore the meaning of Sisu. Anja Olin-Fahle’s anthropologydoctoral dissertation documented the persistence of ethnicity among a small Finnish enclave within an ethni-cally heterogeneous, politically sophisticated and economically diversified city on the eastern seaboard. Shecalled this enclave Finnhill and found Sisu to be a major factor in promoting the cooperative housing projectswhich provided cohesiveness to the community. Sisu operated as a virtual defining characteristic for her respon-dents: when asked for some special characteristics of Finns one of the responses most often given was, “Finnsare people who have Sisu.” Some interest in Sisu as a research topic exists among scholars in Finland as well.This is evident in the words of Professor Päivikki Suojanen, who discovered in her research with Americans ofFinnish descent that, “. . . the concept of sisu is a very central term for American Finnish character or personal-ity . . . maybe sisu is the key symbol for Finnishness.”

Of course other ethnic or racial groups have ethnic and cultural concepts somewhat similar to Sisu. (Soul,Chutzpah and Machismo for example). While these are thought to characterize some or all members of therelevant groups, they seem not to be as central to the members’ ethnic or racial identity and character as Sisu isto Finns.

The Survey Methods

The Sample and Data Collection

A total of 447 respondents from throughout the country completed a one-page, self-administered, anony-mous questionnaire between July and October of 1991. The majority of these were distrilbuted by mail to 91Finnish-American organizations listed in the (then) latest national directory published by FinnFest USA, Inc. Inaddition, two Finnish-American newspapers with national circulations, the Raivaaja and The Finnish-AmericanReporter, solicited respondents, the former with an article and the latter by printing a copy of the questionnaire.A copy was also printed in the monthly newsletter of the Finnish Center Association of Farmington Hills,Michigan. Other questionnaires were given to the author’s friends, relatives and other persons known to be ofFinnish descent. During the survey it became clear that a number of people who had seen or received a ques-tionnaire were supplying them to some of their friends, relatives and/or acquaintances.

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The Survey Findings

The respondents are a population of primarily older persons, 59 percent of them women. Only eight percentare under the age of forty, nearly two-thirds are sixty or over and 39 percent seventy or older. Their backgroundis quite definitely one of Finnish heritage: 86 percent had two Finnish parents and 67 percent are second genera-tion. Fifty percent married a person of Finnish heritage, and 93 percent report that in general they think ofthemselves as Finnish-Americans. About three-fourths (73 percent) report that half or more of their childhoodfriends and acquaintances were of Finnish heritage and over two-thirds (68 percent) report Finnish heritage forhalf or more of their neighbors while they were growing up.

Ninety-one percent believe that people of Finnish heritage have Sisu and the most frequently mentioneddefinitions were Persistence, Guts, Determination and Courage. Eighty-two percent believe that their ownbehavior or attitudes have been affected by Sisu, and most first heard of the word in their own families andwhile quite young: 43 perecent before age ten and another 30 percent between age ten and eighteen, for a totalof 73 percent or nearly three-fourths, before adulthood.

Nearly three-fourths have taught their own children about Sisu.In response to an item asking the respondents to describe in general what Finnish people are like, the most

frequent responses were: hard-working(41 percent), honest(36), quiet/reserved(24), slow to make friends butmake very good friends once they do(15), stubborn(11) and clean(10). Multiple responses were possible.

The only question which revealed any substantial difference between second and third or later-generationrespondents (and this only for the males) was the one on the age at which they first heard or read the word Sisu:about 76 percent of the second-generation, compared to 58 percent of the third or later generation males re-sponded in the before age 18 categories. The later generation males are learning about Sisu, but later in life. Forthe women the responses were 62 and 60 percent, respectively.

One of the most important and interesting findings is that quite high percentages (ranging from 77 to 86) ofall the respondents, regardless of generation, believe that their ideas about Sisu have affected their own behav-iors and/or attitudes. This is true for higher percentages of the second generation women than men and for moreof the later than earlier generations. By this important criteria, then, a belief in and the practice of Sisu is quitealive and well and is not diminishing.

Selected Examples of Sisu

The hundreds of examples of Sisu offered by the respondents were fascinating, revealing and touching.They can be grouped into several categories( not in rank order):

Health and IllnessDeathThe Immigrant ExperienceEconomic ProblemsWar/Military ExperiencesPeacetime DangersCareer/Work/Educational Goals and ProblemsOther Life Problems

Their examples are best illustrated in their own words:I like to think of my grandmother as having Sisu. She was left in the late1800s after the death of her hus-

band with seven small children and 360 acres. She worked, handled working men, handled finances, was suc-cessful when all believed she’d fail. Never spoke the English language, used her children as interpreters. Thatstrikes me as having Sisu.

A retired nurse in her seventies, 2nd generation

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My grandfather was confronted by a black bear and was able to fend it off.An office manager in her thirties, 3rd generation

. . . several of my relatives survived years of Stalin’s slave labor camps in Russia.A retired quality control inspector in her seventies, 2nd generation

The Finnish people of the Upper Peninsula (of Michigan) were . . . very, very poor. With nothing but sweatequity they made a life in a very hostile environment (climate and discrimination). It took real Sisu to pullthrough.

An engineering supervisor in her fifties, 2nd generation

My brother suffered a massive stroke and was paralyzed . . . Spent 18 days at his side and kep repeating,Where’s your Sisu? even for the week he was in a coma. In three months he remembered my telling him abouthis Sisu.

A retired drug store clerk in her seventies, 2nd generation.

As a teenage bride without a high school diploma I was told I’d ruined my chances at a good life. After fortyyears of marriage, graduation from school and raising four children we are proud of, I think Sisu may haveplayed a part in my ‘good life.’

A homemaker and mother in her fifties, 3rd generation

I went through medical school at age 35 when my children were growing up. I finished and I remain practicingin an increasingly hostile environment of medicine today.

A physician in her fifties, 3rd generation

When my (two) children were born, I had no medications or sedatives. Natural childbirth suggests having anobject to look at as a focal point during labor. My husband made me a sign that said Sisu.

A teacher, wife, mother in her forties, 3rd generation

During World War II while on night maneuvers I was expected to climb up a steep 700-foot incline with a sixtypound pack on my back. There were times when I was ready to quit, but it was my Sisu that got me to the top.

A retired Marine officer in his seventies, 2nd generation

My husband and son were critically injured in an accident in 1981. The months of recovery and uncertainty tooktheir toll. I had to draw on an inner reserve, my Sisu, to get through the really tough times.

A medical technologist in her forties, 3rd generation

When my 24-year old son, a journalism teacher, and his fiancée (an art teacher) were killed instantly (in a caraccident) . . . I thought I could never be normal again. But God, and Sisu showed me how I must be strong andsupport my grieving husband and two younger children.

A retired secretary in her seventies, 2nd generation

My family survived the Depression in the 1930s because of Sisu.An international family planning specialist in his fifties, 2nd generation

SummaryThere is a clear, consistent and striking pattern in the findings of this survey: respondents in both categories

of generation and gender reflect a very high level of self-identification as Finnish-Americans; they believe thatpeople of Finnsh heritage have Sisu, which they define as perseverance, determination, guts or courage; they

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learned about it themselves as children (which for many is sixty or more years ago); and they have passed theidea on to their own children. Taken together, these empirical research findings constitute strong evidence of theexistence, persistence and conscious passing on of important behaviors and attitudes grounded in an ethniccharacteristic.

References

Becker, Marlene, “Sisu: Martin Maki”, The Finnish American Reporter,Vol. 5, No. 7, July 15, 1992.Caputo, Philip, Indian Country, Bantam Books, New York,, 1987.Friberg, Eino, personal interview, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March, 1989.Olin-Fahle, Anja, Finnhill: Persistence of Ethnicity in Urban America, Ph.D. dissertation, New York University,New York, 1983.Suojanen, Paivikki, University of Turku, Finland, personal correspondence to author, August 23, 1991.Tokoi, Oskari, Sisu, New York: Robert Speller and Sons, Publishers, Inc., 1957.