EMBARRASS — Marko Huttunen was in Minnesota as a featured speaker for last week’s FinnFest in Duluth, but he also had his heart set on visiting the historic Finnish log buildings in Embarrass, including the Seitaniemi Housebarn.
On Monday, he toured several of the sites with Sisu volunteers Paul Knuti, Ahti Westphal – a Minnesota-based architect with a passion for traditional Finnish wooden architecture – and John Rajala, owner of Minnesota Timber and Millwork, of Deer River, which will be supplying wood for the next phase of the housebarn renovation project.
“This is a very unusual building,” Huttunen said while touring the housebarn. “Finnish people didn’t live in the same buildings as their horses or cattle. I am not sure where this idea came from.”
He wondered if it wasn’t based on architecture from Karelia, Russia, a neighbor to Finland, whose wooden buildings were distinctly different from those found in Finland. Though Karelian log buildings featured round logs, not the hewn squared logs that form most of the housebarn structure.
Huttunen said he started his career as a carpenter but now specializes in restoration and design work, often for historic structures being restored as part of museums.
“I wanted to see what the Finns have done here in Embarrass,” he said.
Knuti gave a detailed tour of the housebarn, including its many unique features such as the hayloft, manure system, and watering system.
Huttunen said the size and diameter of the tamarack logs on the east end (the cow barn section) of the housebarn seemed significantly different than the logs used in the rest of the structure.
“The corners are also so different,” he noted. He wondered if perhaps the larger logs, including those below the hayloft which were not hewn, might have come from a different structure.
“Log buildings can be recycled and moved,” he noted. “I would like to do a dendrochronology of the logs to see if some of them are older.”
He noted that the end wall, on the east side, looks like it was not originally meant to be an outside wall.
“Maybe it was built for something else,” he wondered. “These aren’t traditional outer corners.”
Westphal agreed that the larger logs did look older, noting how dark the wood visible inside the cracks in the log had gotten.
The cow barn section of the housebarn was built after the original house, horse barn, and hayloft were built in 1919. Knuti said they don’t have any information about the origin of the logs used in the cow barn, but he noted that part of the building fits perfectly into the roofline, indicating the logs had been hewn to fit into the original structure, but it didn’t rule out a different origin for the logs. Most of the structure was built from tamarack logs harvested from nearby woods.
Knuti was impressed with the knowledge and interest shown in Sisu’s preservation work.
“Marko is very active in similar preservation work in Finland,” he said. “He sees the same kind of challenges that we do.”
Huttunen and the group also toured other historic buildings in Embarrass that have been preserved by Sisu Heritage, including the Hanka homestead, the Pyhala Farm, the Nelimark homestead, as well as Timber Hall and the log buildings at the Embarrass Campground. They also visited an old log haybarn, situated on a property adjacent to the housebarn, that also was built by the Seitaniemi family.
Huttunen told Knuti that having three Finnish homesteads preserved in good condition in a single community was quite unique, and possibly the only place in the United States where this could be found.
Knuti said hearing this endorsement of Sisu Heritage’s efforts, from someone who is a “world class expert” was exciting.
Finnfest did include a day-long tour to Embarrass to visit the historic log structures.
Marko Huttunen also gave presentations on Finnish architecture projects he had collaborated on, as well as work being done to build a sustainable future using lessons from the past, featuring the wisdom of indigenous and vernacular design from Finland—offering groundbreaking insights for sustainable construction in northern climates.

More renovations
underway
Sisu will be starting on a $150,000 renovation project later this month, funded by a direct grant from the State of Minnesota, secured by former state representative Dave Lislegard a couple of years ago. The grant came with no specific strings attached, Knuti said, so they are using it to rebuild the wall on the south (back) side of the hayloft, reconstruct the privy (just for show, not for use!), and adding new siding to the exterior of the building.
They are working on a new grant to cover the costs of finishing the exterior renovations. Then the final steps will be rebuilding the interior of the cow barn, horse barn, and work on the interior section of the house.