This was followed by threats of severe punishment from the agents if the musicians tried talking to each other, especially in that loopy Swedish-chef lingo they dare to use. Each was then taken to a separate room for over two hours of questioning about the purpose of their visit, which in fact was to play Finnish music at a series of Finnish-American cultural festivals. They tried to explain this but "we were only allowed yes-or-no answers," musicians Ninni Poijarvi and Mika Kuokkanen said. Filmmaker Erkki Maattanen, who was filming the trip for Finnish public television, said, "I kept trying to tell them why we were here, but they'd just yell, 'Shut up!'"

The Finns later swore out a formal complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, part of which avers, "Through the walls I can hear officers yelling, screaming. . . . I try to talk about our plans to meet with Finnish-American folk musicians. Nobody listens. They interrupt me constantly and they yell, 'You are a liar!'"

Turns out the Customs louts were sure the Finns were in the country to work illegally, though as one of their university hosts, Professor Jukka Savolainen, later said, it was a wonder that Border Protection agents would think that well-off Finnish recording artists would travel all the way to the U.S. "in hopes of earning money playing acoustical music in rural Minnesota." Good point.

Now the Finns need new passports, since the Minneapolis morons stamped all of theirs ENTRY DENIED. When that baffling decision was rescinded, the agents simply crossed the stamps out with a pen. That'll look really convincing next time they try to come to the U.S.

But why would they want to?