FinnFest 2009 will be held aboard a cruise ship to Alaska.

The FinnFest USA Board of Directors has booked next year's festival on a ship leaving Seattle May 17, 2009, and returning May 24.

Ports of call will include Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka.

The ship will pass Malcolm Island, site of the Finnish utopian colony, Sointula, and spend an evening in Victoria, British Columbia.

Sitka colony's governors included two Finns, Arvid Etholen, 1840-45, and Johan Hampus Furuhjelm, 1859-63.

During Etholen's tenure, Uno Cygnaeus, later known as the father of Finnish elementary schools, served as pastor to the Alaska Finns, setting the stage for the Sitka Lutheran Church, the first Finnish American Protestant congregation on the Pacific Coast.

The Russian Bishop's House, built by Finns, and the Sitka National Historical Park, where Finns and Russians used to go for recreation, will both be open for tours while the cruise ship docks in Sitka.

Landscape geography professor Arnold Alanen, University of Wisconsin-Madison, who researched Sitka for the National Park Service, will give background lectures for the Sitka visit and assist with the tours.

Max Engman, Åbo Academy, Turku, Finland, highly respected scholar of Finland's Russian history, will lecture on the Alaska Finns and the Finnish experience after its separation from Sweden.

--For more information, check the Cruise Masters' Web site: www.finevoyages.com/FinnFest2009.