Penedo (Itatiaia / RJ), a little piece of Finland in Brazil!
Many may not know, but Penedo, a district of the municipality of Itatiaia / RJ, has the largest, if not unique, Finnish colony of Brazil. It started at the end of the 1920s, when Toivo Uuskallio came to the “magic tropics” with his wife Liisa and three more boys, to work on Three Wells Farm, near Volta Redonda.
Uuskallio like both decided that the trip back to Finland to bring a group of people to form a colony in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Thus, in 1928, published the book “Matkalla kohta Tropiikin Taikaa” (In Travel in the direction of the Tropic Magic), about his impressions for the trip and starting a campaign to recruit volunteers and raise funds. The plan worked, and in 1929, Toivo has enough to buy the farm Penedo, in what was then the city of Resende / RJ.
It is estimated that around 300 immigrants arrived in the Finnish colony by the year 1940. They built houses along the Finnish and practiced architecture, basically, an agriculture of subsistence. Today, however, the basis of the district’s economy is tourism. For those who want to visit, there are excellent hotels and lodges there.
