[citation needed] Migration to North America from Finland continued throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was very sporadic in nature and only a few individuals and groups dared make the move.

[citation needed] While the rest of Europe was industrializing, Finland, by now a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire, was to a great extent excluded from the revolutionary process.

The society was largely agrarian, and unemployment was rising, thanks to population growth and the fact that there was now little land left to cultivate in the country.

[citation needed] Rural life in Finland during the 1860s seemed doomed to remain laborious, stunted, and forever at the mercy of unpredictable weather.

In 1867, a severe crop failure in Finland drove masses of Finns, especially from rural Ostrobothnia, to migrate into Norway, from where they later moved to the United States and Canada.

Rumours began of the acres of land that could be cleared into vast productive fields, and the opportunity to earn "a barrel of American dollars" in mines, factories, and railroads.

In the years surrounding the turn of the 20th century, settlement was focused around three specific regions: The immigration of Finns gave birth to a strong Finnish-American culture, especially in cities such as Duluth and Ashtabula, Ohio.

While many immigrants pursued farming, others found employment in mining, construction, and the forest industry, while women usually worked as maids.

In the case of the Finnish-American enclave in the Finger Lakes region south of Ithaca, New York early in the 20th century, Finns left urban jobs in order to acquire farms that had been sold by their previous owners.

The American revolutionary James P. Cannon noted that a considerable part of these immigrants tended towards the radical left in politics: "Under the impact of the Russian Revolution the foreign-born socialist movement grew by leaps and bounds.

[citation needed] Approximately ten thousand Finns returned from the New World, not to Finland but to the Soviet Union, in the 1920s and the 1930s to "build socialism" in the Karelian ASSR.

[9] Finland Calling, a weekly Finnish cultural television program hosted by Carl Pellonpaa, was broadcast on WLUC-TV in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

[citation needed] Finnish Americans by metropolitan statistical area in 2019: Architect and product designer Eero Saarinen immigrated to the United States in 1923 when he was thirteen years of age and grew up in Michigan.

During the Second World War Saarinen worked for Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which later became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

His designs include the Gateway Arch at the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri, the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, the TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and the main terminal of Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C. Eero's son, Eric Saarinen, is a cinematographer and film director, who has photographed and cinematographed several features, including The Hills Have Eyes, Lost in America, and Exploratorium.

[13][14] Notable Americans of some Finnish descent also include several film stars such as actresses Anna Easteden, Christine Lahti, Marian Nixon, Maila Nurmi, Pamela Anderson, Leslie Mann and Jessica Lange, actors Albert Salmi, Matt Damon, Richard Davalos and George Gaynes, and director David Lynch.

Other notable individuals are author Jean M. Auel, historian Max Dimont (born in Finland of Russian Jewish parentage), cook and cookbook author Beatrice Ojakangas, politician Emil Hurja, labor activist T-Bone Slim, U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall (originally Arvo Kustaa Halberg), Finnish-Kiowa-Comanche U.S. Attorney Arvo Mikkanen, mathematician Lars Ahlfors, musicians Dave Mustaine, Jaco Pastorius, Einar Aaron Swan, Jorma Kaukonen and Mark Hoppus, singer-songwriter Amelia Presley, science fiction author Hannu Rajaniemi, computer scientists Linus Torvalds and Alfred Aho, former Google executive and CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer, co-founder of Apple Mike Markkula, chairman and CEO of General Motors Mary Barra, astronaut Timothy L. Kopra, special forces officer Larry Thorne, ice hockey player Matt Niskanen and serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

In 2010, the three congressional districts with the highest concentrations of Finnish Americans (Michigan 1st, Wisconsin 7th, and Minnesota 8th), all adjacent to Lake Superior, flipped from Democratic to Republican control.