On Saturday, Aug. 22, I was doing some errands and driving down Holman Road when I saw a sign on the pedestrian bridge near Dick's advertising the Finland Summer Festival at the Crown Hill Activity Center.

After I finished my errands, I drove back and checked it out, and I'm glad that I did. I got a nice dose of Finnish culture and a reminder of how important it is to know where you come from.

Although this column is entitled the 21st Century Viking, my Scandinavian heritage is of the Finnish variety. The fact that Ballard has a distinctively Scandinavian history and flair is what drew me here in the first place.

My paternal great-grandparents and my grandmother immigrated to America from Finland in the 1920s and settled in Maine. If they were around today, I bet they would have enjoyed the festival.

There were a bunch of tables with people selling Finnish related items and promoting their organizations. I got tips on Finn organization meetings and where to take a Finnish language class.

In the main hall, there were tables full of people enjoying Finnish food, listening to music and dancing. I sat down and ate some pulla (a Finnish bread) and listened to the music, trying to take it all in.

I would have stayed the rest of the afternoon, but I had to go to work.

Going to the festival made me realize a couple of things: I really want to go to Finland and that I don't know as much about my Finnish heritage as I would like.

When I arrived in Ballard I became interested in my Finnish heritage. I went down to the Swedish-Finn Historical Society when it was still located in Ballard and they helped me find the records of my family going through Ellis Island, but after that I got sidetracked.

The only way that you are going to learn about your heritage is to talk to your family and reach out to other members of the community. There's only a couple of relatives on my Finnish side left who I can still talk to including my father, but they live far away so I need to do a little more outreach to the Northwest Finnish community.

A lot of the Finnish people who I met at the festival seem to be a little older, and I discovered that it is really important to me that I get to talk to them and learn about what life was like for them in America and in Ballard.

Whatever your heritage, I suggest you take a moment to think about how much you know about your family history. Your family is your link to your past and we all need to learn from them so we can gather their stories and hopefully pass them on.

Too many people today are preoccupied with modern life that they sometimes forget to learn these stories and even if you try, most of them end up getting lost. We're all making our stories right now, but they're just one chapter in a much larger one.

Sometimes it takes a Finnish Summer Festival to remind ourselves of that.

Do you have a column suggestion or a comment for Brian LeBlanc? Leave a comment on this story or reach him directly at brianleblanc76@yahoo.com.