1938 Excursion to Finland by the Order of Runeberg - Seventy-Five Years

At the beginning of 2013 Spice Drawer Mouse included diary entries from the 1930 Order of Runeberg Choir Tour to Finland by Linnea Gord, the nineteen-year-old piano accompanist.  In 1938 the Order of Runeberg made efforts to achieve another Choir Tour to Finland.  Although the Choir Tour did not gather momentum, a successful 1938 Excursion to Finland happened.  Among travelers to Finland were Gord's Family Orchestra members Linnea Gord, Ray Gord, and Gilbert Gord, who performed on board their Atlantic crossing with other musicians as the Suomi Band.

As this event and its media accounts enters Public Domain at seventy-five, these media clippings describe the summer in Finland and Sweden in The Tacoma News Tribune.


Photograph of Linnea Gord 1938



Article 1938



Linnea Gord was twenty-seven in 1938 and worked as a secretery, a choir director, and a Scandinavian dance band piano player.  Her mother, Amanda Gord, also traveled with them.  Only five years later the two other band members, Ray Gord, accordianist, and Gilbert Gord, drummer, along with the brother who also traveled with them, Elmer Gord, all were in the United States Army.  About four years later the Liner, the Lancastria, which had been turned into a troopship, was torpedoed by the Germans.  It sank at sea.  The seventieth anniversary of the Second World War is remembered by many in the United States.