Minnesota: Finlandia

I would like to know in what sense Minnesota is "also known as Finlandia".

Wikipedia, always a sucker for nicknames, lists seven for Minnesota: Gopher State, Land of 10,000 Lakes, New England of the West, North Star State, State of Hockey, Minne(snow)ta, and Bread and Butter State. You will note that Finlandia is not one of them.

There are plenty of links between Minnesota and Finland. There's even a community in Minnesota called Finland (population 195 in 2010). It's said that Finnish immigrants to the USA were attracted to Minnesota by the similarity of its climate and landscape to those of their homeland. Both Finland (the country) and Minnesota are known for their lakes; Finland like to be known as the Land of a Thousand Lakes (even though it's said to have over 180,000), and Minnesota (being American) has to go ten times better, so, as we've already seen, it calls itself the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

But as I said at the start: in what sense is Minnesoata "also known as Finlandia"?

If you google "minnesota finlandia", you get lots of hits referring to an annual cross–country ski marathon. "Minnesota finland", however, comes up with a few those helpful questions that Google does, one of which is "Which state is also known as Finlandia?" But if you execute that search, it doesn't even come close to answering the question. It comes up with the Wikipedia pages for Finland (the country) and Finlandia (the Sibelius piece), the Britannica page for Finland, the Finland Country Profile on www.nationsonline.org, and so on. But none of these seems to verify that Minnesota is "also known as Finlandia"; the assertion seems tenuous to say the least.