June 6, 2025

​Hello Pittsburgh Finns and friends!
We are happy to invite you to our Juhannus/Midsummer party on Saturday, June 21st, 4-8 pm. Join us for sausages, burgers, and hotdogs on the grill. Please consider bringing a side dish, salad or dessert to share; BYOB. Come prepared for sauna. The party will be held in Wexford, a northern suburb of Pittsburgh. Please send us a message under the Contacts, Credits Tab if you would like to join us.

In the past few months, we have been busy with entertaining and planning, as well as continuing our mission to add a Finnish Room to the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh.

Our May Day / Vappu picnic was held Sunday May 4th in North Park. With roughly 20 people in attendance, we had a good opportunity for socializing, grilling and updating our members on the revitalization of the Finnish nationality room project.

The Pittsburgh Sauna Society was recognized with a memorandum of understanding to be established as the first local chapter of the North American Sauna Society. The memorandum was facilitated together by Finlandia Foundation National, the North American Sauna Society, and Nate Fix. We would like to invite anyone interested in authentic sauna culture to please sign up for the newsletter at pittsburghsaunasociety.com and watch for public events in the future. (Note, the site may be under construction, so check back frequently within the next month.)

We will have attendance at FinnFest in Duluth, MN and at follow-up events hosted in Hancock, MI. The Finnish Room Committee would like to collaborate with the Nationality Rooms communications/media teams to get promotional video materials in order to be shared in time for these events, starting July 31st.  

We are also planning a group outing to visit the Scandinavian Home exhibit at the Frick Art Museum which will run from September 27, 2025 to January 11, 2026; outing date TBA. Deemed one of the most extraordinary collections of Scandinavian art in North America, this exhibition comprises over 100 works from the private collection of Pennsylvania-based art collectors David and Susan Werner. From stunning landscapes to exquisite housewares, the Werners’ collection includes Nordic furniture, ceramics, glass, painting, textiles, sculpture, graphics and metalwork from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries.

In our ongoing Finnish Nationality Room project, Finnish log construction historian Frank Eld (committee member) has been meeting with the project architects to solidify room design details for historical accuracy. Although funding is still in progress, the latest discussions estimate construction of the room to begin during spring 2026. 
We'd like to thank all members, and those involved once again for their donations and their PATIENCE with the Finnish room project - a project decades in the making, passed on to new generations to come. We should not stop supporting our project and our group.  We are ALL now builders of our ROOM. Also, we need to keep our group going through yearly dues. 

If you haven’t paid dues or want to make a donation, you need to follow separate procedures for the two organizations we are members of—the Finlandia Foundation Pittsburgh Chapter and the University of Pittsburgh Finnish Room Committee.

Finlandia Foundation Pittsburgh
Dues are $5 yearly. We also appreciate donations for office supplies, if you would like to add something extra to the $5. 
Make the check payable to “Finlandia Foundation Pittsburgh” and send it to “Sally Morton, 5250 Liberty Ave, Apt 447, Pittsburgh, PA 15224-2380.” 
Finnish Room Committee
Dues are $10 yearly. You can also include donations for the Finnish Room, since all monies sent to our Committee go into the same fund while we are building the room. 
By mail:
Make the check payable to “University of Pittsburgh” and in the memo write “Finnish Room”. Send it to “University of Pittsburgh, PO Box 640093, 
Pittsburgh, PA 15264-0093”.  
Online: 
This procedure is complicated at the moment but will become simpler once we have an established room. We tried it and it works!
Go to http://www.nationalityrooms.pitt.edu
Select the About button at the top left and then select Support the Nationality Rooms! --you will be sent to the page Donate to the Nationality Rooms. 
Cursor to the bottom of the page under the section General Funds and click the Finnish Room Construction link.  You will be sent to the University of Pittsburgh/Pitt Giving page. 
Fill in the gift amount. Click on Choose Area(s) to Support. You will be sent to the page Select Your Area(s) of Support. Scroll down to the bottom and select Other and click Continue. 
The University of Pittsburgh/Pitt Giving page will appear again only this time Please Enter a Description of Where to Direct This Donation will appear under Designations.
In the box below Please Enter a Description, type Finnish Construction Fund and continue filling in the form. 
Best wishes for a happy holiday season!

Your Officers