Paavo Johannes Nurmi—one of the most famous Finns who ever lived—was born in 1897 in Turku (Finland), son of carpenter Johan Nurmi and his wife Matilda. Considered the greatest runner of all time, he was known simply as “The Flying Finn.”
Everyone, everywhere knew it meant Nurmi, rounding the last turn ahead of the pack. His countrymen were proud of this running machine who brought fame to their brand new country. Stopwatch in hand, Nurmi trained harder than anyone before him, and it paid off.
During three Olympics in the 1920s, he won twelve medals, including nine golds. There were three golds and a silver at Antwerp in 1920, five golds at Paris in 1924 and one gold and two silvers at Amsterdam in 1928 at age thirty-one.
During a twelve-year career, he set twenty-five world records. Marjatta Väänänen, Finland’s Education Minister, proclaimed that “Records will be broken, gold medals lose their luster...[but] Paavo Nurmi will never be beaten.” Nurmi didn’t believe in the adage that “records are meant to be broken”—he most certainly didn’t want his broken; they were his legacy.
His fame, even by today’s standards, was stunning. In 1924, the government commissioned sculptor Waino Aaltonen to produce a Nurmi statue. The statue and three later copies, are positioned throughout Finland. Other honors piled up: medals, postage stamps, bank notes, all bearing his likeness. Biographies were authored, streets named for him, even a small planet.
Although many considered him a Finnish goodwill ambassador, Nurmi actually was an introvert, obsessed with running, aloof from colleagues and rivals—“bleak and remote,” one observer said. Sportswriter Martti Jukola found him a mixed blessing.
“There was something inhumanly stern and cruel about him, but he conquered the world with a supernatural will,” Jukola said.
Following his death in Helsinki on October 2, 1973, Nurmi was given a state funeral and buried in his native Turku. His memory lives on in events like the annual Paavo Nurmi Marathon held in Wisconsin every second Saturday in August. More than 500 entrants (the record high was 1,057) are expected for the thirty-seventh Paavo on August 13, run from Upson to Hurley on the Michigan-Wisconsin border. How fitting that the Finnish stew mojakka is served to runners at the finish line. On that same day, Finn Grand Fest 2005 features Paavo Nurmi five- and ten-kilometer runs at Mattson Park in Marquette. The lead runner will be a real-life Paavo Nurmi namesake (not a relative).

Eero Saarinen: Arch-Finn
Born in Finland in 1910, architect Eero Saarinen was the son of another famous designer, Eliel Saarinen, and his wife Loja, a sculptor, weaver, photographer and architectural model maker.
Early on, Saarinen was immersed in the arts, especially drawing and painting, with emphasis on quality and professional output. As evidenced by his later projects, no creation of his stood alone, because he always sought to design an object within its next largest context—“a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, environment in a city plan.”
His first prize, at age twelve, was a first-place win in a design contest using matchsticks. Many more victories followed. In 1923, the Saarinens left Finland for the United States, settling near Detroit, where father Eliel managed the Cranbrook Institute of Architecture and Design. Eero went off to study at Yale and in Europe before returning to Cranbrook as an instructor and partner in his father’s architectural firm. Here he began building a reputation for creative innovation, which was interrupted for three years while Eero served with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II .
In 1947, he burst into the big time as an independent architect by winning the design competition for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It was time for “a monument of lasting significance, a landmark of our time,” he said. “Neither an obelisk nor a rectangular box nor a dome seemed right on this site or for this purpose. But here, at the edge of the Mississippi River, a great arch did seem right.” And so was born the famous Gateway Arch, towering 630 feet over the river at St. Louis. Saarinen considered it a perfect work, both in form and symbolism.
There were other triumphs—like Washington’s Dulles Airport—before Saarinen died as the result of a brain tumor in 1961 at age fifty-one. He was buried in his adopted Michigan. Just as the Gateway Arch symbolizes the way West for the pioneers, it had marked the beginning of his career.
“The Arch is really a monument to all those with a vision: Thomas Jefferson, the American pioneers and Eero Saarinen,” wrote one biographer.
The National Park Service calls it “the perfect monument to the spirit of the Western pioneers.”

I Know That Guy...
You’ve seen the face many times—in dozens of movies and hundreds of television shows. He’s Albert Salmi, everyone’s favorite bad guy, who starred on stage, TV and in movies for forty years. His height, build and nasty growl made him the prototype bad guy and brought steady work. When directors needed a menacing presence, they often sent for Salmi, who could flat-out play any role.
He was born Alfred Salmi on March 11, 1928, in Brooklyn to Svante and Ida Salmi, Finland natives who always spoke Finnish around the house.
Salmi was a troublesome kid, but tough farm work and the discipline of Army life gave him the will to make something of himself. His size landed him an unwanted military police job, but a lucky assignment guarding movie star Tyrone Power on a tour of European bases led to a staff job on Power’s show. This was more to his liking. During a twelve-day leave, Salmi successfully snuck into Finland (which was off limits to GIs at the time) to visit Tampere, the hometown of his parents, where he met many relatives and had a glorious time.
Changing his first name to Albert, he used his GI Bill credits to study acting, and then set out for a Broadway career, which became his first love. A role in the hit play Bus Stop brought him favorable reviews, which convinced him that so-called bit parts could pave the road to success and security. And so he became a character actor—one of the best ever.
Avoiding what he called “the Hollywood game,” Salmi neither courted to the big shots or lorded over the little guys. He was known for his sense of humor and lack of phoniness, a family man with many outside hobbies and interests. A 1956 marriage to actress Peggy Ann Garner produced a daughter, but ended in divorce after seven years. By then, his career was booming: roles in more than fifty movies, two TV series and guest spots on a variety of TV shows. Whatever the part, he could play it, but he especially loved westerns. In 1967, he reaped his most prized award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for a Gunsmoke episode.
His 1964 marriage to Roberta Pollock, which produced two daughters, ended tragically in 1990 in a murder-suicide. The details are in his biography, Spotlights & Shadows: The Albert Salmi Story.

Mannerheim!
For half a century, no single countryman symbolized the long Finnish fight for freedom more than Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, who held enough high offices and grand titles for several lifetimes. Among his giant accomplishments were leading Finland to a victory in the crucial 1917 civil war, and serving as his country’s military commander-in-chief during the perilous and painful days of World War II, when the enemy was the powerful Soviet Union.
The indomitable Finnish spirit, ever resistant to subjugation, was personified in the magnificent Mannerheim. His armies were outnumbered 15-to-1 by the Russians, but so what? Officially, the Russians won the war, but lost a million men in the trying.
“We won enough ground to bury our dead,” moaned a Russian general.
Mannerheim had been born in Askainen (Finland) in 1867 and joined the Russian army after being expelled from military school. He served in both the Russo-Japanese and First World wars, rode on horseback all the way to China and back, then returned to newly independent Finland after the 1917 Russian revolution. He found a land torn by revolt and occupied by 40,000 Russians. In 1918, Mannerheim’s “White Army” was victorious against the Reds in a brief Finnish civil war, but lost in the the country’s first presidential election the following summer. In later years, he rose through the military to the ultimate rank of marshal.
The Winter War erupted in November 1939 when the U.S.S.R. invaded Finland and bombed its cities. Mannerheim was commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces during the Winter War (1939-40) and the War of Continuation (1941-44) which followed. At the same time, he had the delicate task of trying to keep his country from supporting Hitler’s Germany. Near the war’s end, he was named President of the Republic, and was able to lead Finland out of the war as the sole losing country not occupied by foreign troops. In 1946, his health failing, Mannerheim resigned the presidency. He spent his final days in Switzerland, where he died in 1951 at age eighty-three.
The finale of his memoirs beautifully summarized Finnish resolve: “By closing ranks at the moment of peril the people of Finland earned for themselves the right to continue to live their own independent lives within the family of free peoples...They were made of sound and sturdy stuff.”

Sibelius: The Soul of Finland
If Paavo Nurmi was the most famous Finn, could there be a more artistic and resolute countryman than the incomparable Jean Sibelius? One name—Sibelius—shook down the thunder, filled the ears with music and exemplified the Finnish spirit. Say “Sibelius,” and Finlandia immediately comes to mind—one of the most stirring symphonic movements of the ages.
Finland’s greatest composer was born in Hameenlinna in 1865. Before his death in Jarvenpaa ninety-two years later, he had stitched his soul into his scores. He began with the Kullervo Symphony in 1892, based on the national saga The Kalevala, but then turned to other themes in the seven symphonies he composed between 1899 and 1924.
His most famous emerged from several pieces created at different times, all aimed at celebrating Finland’s campaign against Russian control. A finale titled Finland Awakes soon gained popularity as a separate and distinct piece in its own right. Sibelius further revised it and called it the timeless title of Finlandia, as suggested in an anonymous letter (whose author later revealed himself and became a lifelong supporter). Finlandia, which earned the status of a national tone poem, evoked the country’s drive for independence from the Russians, who had corralled the Finns within the supposedly autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and then proceeded to tighten the screws. Could you fight the mighty Russians with music? Oh, boy, could you ever.
It seems like all five million Finns and numberless expatriates are massed in the orchestra to play a message of freedom and defiance. Although composed well before the country’s independence and the Russian wars, Finlandia appears to musically chronicle those events, including, at the seven-minute mark, what could be the angry bark of Sibelius’s rifle as he allegedly fired at overflying Russian planes from his garden. The concluding words of the hymn portion, written by poet V.A. Koskenniemi and translated by Keith Bosley, carry the promise of freedom:
Finland, arise, and raise towards the highest
thy head now crowned with mighty memory.
Finland, arise, for to the world thou criest
that thou hast thrown off thy slavery,
beneath oppression´s yoke thou never liest.
Thy morning´s come, O Finland of ours!
The houses in which he was born and died are now museums, and his birthday is a national event.
—Larry Chabot

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