Salo Park in St. Anthony Village is a visual reminder of the city’s friendship with Salo, Finland. (Al Zdon)
Forty years ago this year, St. Anthony Village and Salo, Finland, became sister cities.
The intervening years have seen the exchange of orchestras, citizens, youth groups and good will between the cities. There have been about 30 people exchanges through the years.
“After World War II, President Eisenhower didn’t just want nations to get along, he wanted person-to-person contact,” said Ruth Ann Marks, president of St. Anthony’s Sister City program. “The idea was to reduce world conflict.”
The international Sister Cities program matched up Salo and St. Anthony as compatible, although Salo has a population these days of 51,000 while St. Anthony has just over 9,000 citizens.
Salo became a municipality in 1891, but can trace its history as a center of rural commerce back to the 16th century. St. Anthony was incorporated as a village in 1945, but can trace its history back to St. Anthony Township, founded in 1858.
Salo was once home to a major Nokia manufacturing plant, but that plant closed some years ago. St. Anthony was home of Minnesota’s first strip mall, St. Anthony Shopping Center.
The first president of the Sister Cities organization in St. Anthony was George Marks and the first secretary was Florence Marks, Ruth Ann’s mom and dad.
“We’ve been a very active organization with a strong board,” Marks said. “We’re all volunteers.” Marks noted that there are four members of the current board who are of Finnish descent.
Through the years, the two cities have done a number of activities, mainly sending people back and forth to learn more about the other country.
There have been Finnish youth groups, including a team that played Finnish baseball. “All I can tell you is that it didn’t look like American baseball.”
The Finnish teens tend to be much more stoic than their American counterparts. “We had some Finnish teenage boys and we took them canoeing on the St. Croix River, but they were so quiet that we didn’t know if they were having fun. Then one of the canoes tipped over and they all started laughing. What a relief, they were having fun.”
Many adults have also made the journey over the Atlantic, often staying as guests in homes of the other city. On one trip to Finland in 1992, where a tree was planted in honor of St. Anthony, Sauli Niinistö of Salo was present. He later became president of Finland and came back to visit St. Anthony.
A lasting reminder of the Sister City program came in 2006 when Finnish sculptor Sakari Peltola created an original piece called “Weatherman” for St. Anthony. The artist was looking for an interest that both cities shared, and he chose the weather.
Another reminder of the Sister City connection is Salo Park, just west of Silver Lake Village, dedicated in 2005 and featuring water and performance spaces.
An internationally known Finnish composer, Olli Kortekangas, composed a piece based on the Finnish folk tale, “Lost Melody,” which had its world premiere played by the St. Anthony Village Orchestra. The event was in 2017, which marked Finland’s centennial.
The 40th anniversary will be celebrated this year with several events including an April 27 celebratory brunch. And a group of six Salo residents will be in St. Anthony for the annual VillageFest in August.
The VillageFest has become home to two unique sporting events that came directly from Finland. One is a cell phone tossing contest that has become very popular. The other is a carry-your-partner race, also a Finnish creation.
The celebration will continue in 2026 when a group of Villagers will travel to Salo. This past year, local residents traveled to Salo to participate in a tree planting ceremony honoring George Marks.
The Sister City program also sponsors Red Cross blood drives three times a year. “Appointments are still available,” Ruth Ann Marks said. The next one will be on Friday, May 30.
Marks said the program helps people know and understand people from a different part of the world. “It’s an opportunity to meet someone different from you and in a surprising way. There’s a commonality between different people, and there’s a lot of power in that.
“As individual people, on a person-to-person level, we’re not making policy, we’re not talking politics. We are explicitly nonpolitical. But we can make a difference in the world.”