FinnFunn 2026
It All Began With a Conversation
In 1992, Smiley and her husband Jack were driving home to Connecticut from a weekend in New Hampshire at the White Mountain Hotel when she gave voice to her thoughts. “This would be a great place to have a group of Finnish people get together.” Jack didn’t hesitate. “Well, do it.”
Three words. Thirty-four years.
What Anita and Jack built together became something neither of them could have predicted on that drive home. Jack would have loved seeing FinnFunn reach this point. And knowing Jack, he’d already be pushing to see what comes next. Anita agrees.
FinnFunn Weekend 2023 Opening Remarks by Anita Smiley
Connecting people has always been the point — in New England and across an ocean. Since 1986, Anita has been taking Finnish Americans on discovery tours to Finland. Forty years. Still going.
FinnFunn itself has moved around over the years — hosted some years by a single New England or a New York Finnish community, other years by several working together. Or at The Inn at East Hill Farm, our home base.
Anita has attended every one of the thirty-four weekends. Still on the planning committee. Still showing up the same way she always has. Still greeting newcomers like you.
She’s 91. If you’re looking for a definition of sisu, you just found her.
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”
That fire — the one Anita and Jack carried home from New Hampshire in 1992 — is still in the room today.
By Saturday afternoon at FinnFunn, something shifts. You’re in a sauna conversation with someone you met three hours ago. Someone nearby is playing a violin or an accordion, or maybe you’ve wandered into DJ Minea’s set of popular Finnish songs. Finnish roots. Modern lives. Made audible.
Nobody engages in conventional boot tossing or wife carrying contests — but rather Finnish mobile phone tossing, mölkky, and a Finnish card game you’ve never heard of — all of which turn out to be more fun than they have any right to be. Some years there’s a procession like the Moomins on parade. You’ll want to be there for that. By Sunday morning you don’t want to leave.
The feeling that you belong here. It has a name. The Finns call it kotiinpaluu. Homecoming. And it’s been waiting for you.
The generation that grew up not knowing quite why Finland felt familiar — you’re exactly who this next chapter of FinnFunn New England Weekend belongs to.
Anita built the first chapter. She’ll be there in October to welcome you into the next one.
