Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum Interview of Darlene Waara Bjornsgard July 25th, 2014 Naselle, Washington Interviewers: Gordon Strand & Brandon Benson Q. [00:00:00] Today is July 25th, 2014 and we are doing interviews for the Nordic American Voices Oral History Project at the Naselle School in Naselle, Washington. Today, we'll be interviewing Darlene -- A. Bjornsgard. Q. -- Bjornsgard. My name is Gordon Strand and I am assisted by Brandon Benson. Welcome, Darlene. A. Thank you. Q. Thank you for participating. And we would like to you to first identify your name, date of birth, where you were born and give us your family history. Give us your story. A. [00:00:37] All right. Okay. My name is Darlene Jane. I was Waara, which came from V äära which was my great- grandparents' name, Autiovaara, Johan and Anna. They homesteaded here and I live on their property now. I was born in Raymond, Washington, just up the road, closest hospital at the time, March 9th of 1944. So I've lived here my entire life. I've lived the last 21 years on my great-grandparents' homestead, which was always my dream. It was kept in the family. It was very difficult during the Depression years. A great aunt who was widowed just raised potatoes and did whatever she could to keep the property intact. So her daughter was left with it and her daughter had no children and knew that I had always wanted to live there. A. [00:01:35] So we initially bought four or five acres and then, on her death, we got the rest of it which was, I guess, probably about 100 now. But now I have two children that own on it, one particularly. So it's still in the family and I still do live there. Johan and Anna -- she was Anna Varanka (phonetic), and she came from the Posio area ]close to] Kuusamo up in the northeast. They came here in 1894, came around the cape. They worked in San Francisco long enough to get monies enough to come to Astoria, Oregon. They were in Astoria for, I think, just a year or two and then they were able to come over and homestead the property that I live on. I happen to have their homestead papers from Northern Pacific Railroad. I have, in fact, her spinning wheel she brought from Finland and her trunk and several of their things, their passports. A. [00:02:45] So they lived there their entire adult Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 16 lives, raised their children. They came with three children, three or four, lost one on the way from Finland, and then had the rest of the children, including my grandfather [Charles Waara (Autiovaara)], on the property that I now own. My father was raised just across the creek. We're on the Salmon Creek. My grandfather sold Aladdin lamps from here to the California border, I guess, and suits. He died when I was a year old, so I never knew him, but I have a cousin of my father's that kept everything. So just a lot of the memorabilia is in my possession. I'm 100 percent Finnish and I have checked pretty well in Finland to know that. A. [00:03:53] I married a Norwegian, so I kind of messed it up a little bit for my kids, but they have grown up here, four of them. Three still live here. They all went to college, came back. One was here for 10 years and then moved on to the Portland area, but all of the other three families are here. They are all involved, of course, with the festival and have kept as many of the Finnish traditions as possible. On my mother's side, they came really much later. Grandpa came in 1908 and he had married my grandmother in Finland, but she waited there for a year. Basically, many of the families who lived here still were their friends in Finland. They would contact their friends there, tell them about the place. Their neighbors here really were their neighbors in Finland, [many] who I remember very well as a child. Q. What was the motivation for leaving, do you know? A. [00:04:56] Just the better life. I do know with my great-grandparents who came from the Kuusamo area -- it was very, very tough times there. They seemed even a little reluctant to talk about it up there in the northeast, because I guess it was. It was just very, very bad. So they came just to get the better life. Grandpa [Pollari] did too, although he had talked -- not during my lifetime but with my mother's -- his intention was never to stay here. He was going to come here, work, make some money, and go back to Finland. Then the following year, he had my grandma come and I've thought so many times, I just can't [imagine her coming alone]. She was such a wonderful lady who never really learned English. She could understand English, but she never really spoke it. So we grew up learning Finnish along with English. I've spoken Finnish my whole life. A. [00:05:54] So she came through New York -- and then she had a brother in the Midwest, Warren, Ohio -- stayed there for a while, and then came here. They settled here in Naselle, and lived here, and raised all five children here, including my mother. I do know that they were married already in Finland. Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 16 Grandpa farmed and was a real entrepreneur. He just did it all and had a couple of farms by the time he died. I always used to ask him when he was going to retire, "Well, I'm going to. I'm going to and then I'm going to make a trip back to Finland." At 75, he took a spill off the roof of the barn, but came out of that just fine and then just lived a few more years, never retired from the farm, never retired from milking, never got back to Finland. Q. Never got back. A. [00:06:54] No, never got back. I know my mother's mother -- we called her Aiti, which means mother. It was Aiti and Grandpa to us. Her mother [my great-grandmother] died just ten months after she came here, but she did not know of that until much later because they didn't get information [quickly] here. There is one story that I'm just thinking about that was kind of interesting. Grandpa was the first one from his family to come and they were from the Pohjanmaa. Grandpa came first from his family from Veteli. My grandmother was from Lapua and they were married in Sievi. But he was the first one, so he worked and made some money and paid for a brother to come, who actually ended up staying in Canada. Then he paid for a sister to come and she lived her whole life in Astoria. Then another sister was going to come. A. [00:08:00] We met her. Actually, she's been here and we met here many, many years ago and also in Finland. She had her ticket in hand and there was the ship that went down. The Titanic went down, scared her to death. She never came. So when we have been in Finland and met her children and grandchildren, it's just so odd for them to think that they should have been Americans, but she did not come. She was, I think, the only one that didn't. Anyway, they lived here their entire lives. We grew up with Saturday night sauna. Of course, the saunas, until very recently, here in Naselle have all been the old-fashioned wood saunas outside. I think there's only maybe three that are indoor right now, which is a little strange almost. A. [00:08:59] But we grew up with that. They were farmers and had -- all the Finn families around here were farmers and did some logging, of course, too. But they had what were called chicken meetings. And basically they had a chicken co-op thing, I guess. And I remember as a little kid, those were just really fun nights. I think they met maybe every couple of weeks or once a month and it was mostly a lot of talking and the Kahvi Aika with all of the foods, lots of food, always lots of food. That still is a tradition here even our graduations, people that come from out of town. I mean, Nordic American Voices Page 3 of 16 everybody has a smorgasbord because that's what you do as food. My mother and my grandmother would just be horrified that I have served plain coffee to people. I mean, not even with my mother, you just wouldn't do it. You just would not do it. Q. What would she serve? A. [00:09:56] You'd have something. You'd have cookies, cake, usually a table full, even if you weren't expecting company. But always something with, there was never that, a plain cup of coffee ever. Sugar and cream, you know, most of them did. A lot of the men -- I remember one of the pastors from the Congregational church was a very good friend of my grandparents. When he would come -- and my grandpa did this too, they would pour their coffee into the saucer, I guess to kind of cool it, and they literally drank it from the saucer and almost always with ballasokaya, which is cube sugar and they just drank the coffee through their teeth.