to the naive observer, when visiting the finnish festival in marquette michigan it’s almost impossible to not conclude that a large part of finnish heritage must have something to do with wooden chairs.

there are nearly 3,000 chairs on display around the city which were the result of chair painting workshops held throughout the 15 counties that comprise the upper peninsula of michigan. most of the chairs use pictures to tell the stores of local resident’s finnish history and are painted in the blue and white colors of the finish flag;

even though he just tipped the scales at twenty pounds, odin still looks a bit dimunitive in some of the chairs.

i had no idea finns were so tall 🙂

chairs, chairs and more chairs! everywhere there were blue and white chairs!

there was some debate amongst the purists whether most of the chairs used were painted with proper hue of cobalt blue found in the finish flag as it looked decidely royal. conspiracy theorists posited that sherman williams donated the wrong color to the project, but our crack team of investigative reporters have been unable to confirm the rumor.

we saw many more sights during our finn fest adventure; feel free to click on any of the pictures below to see a brief description.