If the Kalmar Union, or a Sweden-Norway Union emerging from it which wasn't so focused on the Baltic, had survived, they might re-establish Vinland, and as a result send the Forest Finns to the New World (see New Sweden, which had a significant amount of Finnish settlers, or in general the movements of Finns northwards into formerly Sami country). Some will assimilate to the Norse settlers, but there will be pockets which will maintain a Finnish identity. Potentially, this could be anything from the size of the OTL Canadian Gaelic population to the OTL French Canadian population. If we assume the British are colonising at the same point, and France is content to use the Norse as their New World proxy against the British (for the fur trade and such), then we can still have a nation emerge like the United States. If the United States and our "Vinland" follow a similar course of development as the US and Canada did OTL, then many Vinlanders in the poorer regions--the areas most likely to preserve Finnish language and culture--will emigrate to the United States. See the migrations of French-Canadians, or for that matter Finnish Americans who decided to move from Canada to the United States. And whatever happens to Finland ITTL, it's likely Finns will still migrate--Finland will still be a poor borderland. If our Kalmar Union state can secure Karelia, then they have another realm to recruit settlers from--Karelians falling under the header of "Finns".

Much of this will be focused on New England, Upstate New York, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They won't be liked by the natives there (OTL this is what drove the Ku Klux Klan in New England in the 1920s), so we'll hope we have at worst OTL policies toward these immigrants. But their numbers will be impossible to ignore. They'll soon enough end up as local political figures who may make it all the way to the United States presidency.

Home Buyer: Hello, I've heard you're selling your house, and I'm interested in buying it.
Aunt: Oh, that'd be swell, could I see some information please?
Home Buyer: Sure, here you go.
Sees that the last name ends with -nen
Aunt: Oh...
Pulls out sign that says "we don't sell to n**roes, ch**ks, b**ners, t**elheads or finns".
Home Buyer: Walks away and gives middle finger from car.

Please don't kick me for using censored racial slurs in a post as an example to show how ridiculous not selling to someone because of race or ethnicity is.

"If it ends in '-nen', you're not my friend." Personally I'd laugh at such prejudice (and I know my cousins and other relatives would too).

Like I said, it's the weirdest prejudice. Oddly enough, the family we did end up selling the house (but not the farmland) to where Hmong, so it really is pretty targeted. It has alot to do with lopsided local taxes that hit the farm-owners pretty hard to pay for a school system that's getting a surge of Finnish kids who's parents don't own local property. Apparently, their Church tells them to have alot of kids.

Might be a local thing, since my own immediate family and their ancestors never experienced anything similar. I guess in New England the Finns weren't any worse than the Italians, Portuguese, French-Canadians, etc. to the locals there. I've never heard of any sect associated with Finnish Americans like you describe, although I do have distant relatives who are staunch teetotalers.

Have a lot of McDonald's go into UP. There won't be more Finns, but they'll be larger....

If you're going that approach, we can get more serious. Number one, weaken the influence of temperance/teetotal ideology on certain Lutheran denominations widely followed by Finns in both their home country and the United States. Number two, weaken the tobacco industry (there's many PoDs for this)--cigarettes are just as lethal as alcohol in the long-term, but do have the benefit of causing weight-loss. This might be harder since many early anti-tobacco efforts were linked to Prohibitionism.

As a result, Prohibition in the United States never happens, and is regarded as a failed experiment in the local areas it occurs in (i.e. Baptists in the rural South), and it isn't likely to succeed on the state level. In Finland, Prohibition is never adopted--this extends to other countries like Sweden and Iceland, where temperance movements are weakened.

Since both the US and Finland never have Prohibition, all sorts of local breweries and such are allowed to continue. I wouldn't be surprised if in the Upper Peninsula or some other place Finns settle, local companies producing sahti, vodka, etc. are established. Although Finnish-Americans (especially second generation) will also very much be drinking the typical beers and other alcohol which Americans drink (which will be a much richer selection than OTL, as Prohibition decimated the US's alcohol industry). The main difference is that since there's less religious concern on both sides on the Atlantic, there's more alcohol consumption.

Alcohol consumption is a great way to gain weight--the term "beer belly" exists for a reason. Like many European ethnic groups, Finns have a stereotype regarding their alcohol consumption. So weaken religious concern against alcohol use, weaken competing vices (tobacco), and you have a clear way to making Finns "larger".
 
Might be a local thing, since my own immediate family and their ancestors never experienced anything similar. I guess in New England the Finns weren't any worse than the Italians, Portuguese, French-Canadians, etc. to the locals there. I've never heard of any sect associated with Finnish Americans like you describe, although I do have distant relatives who are staunch teetotalers.

It is a local thing. The church is the Finnish Apostolics, also known as Laestadians. Its more a standing conflict with the Swedish-decended populations that follow a more conventional brand of Lutheranism.
 
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