FINLAND, Minn. _ In the hallway of Kurt and Betsey Mead's log cabin near Finland, Minn., early one Tuesday morning, the deer hunters geared up for the day's hunt. Ulf Forsman, 63, adjusted the beam of his headlamp. Anders Hermansson, 42, slipped on his Duluth pack and slung his rifle.
It isn't unusual for deer hunters to cover long distances to gather with fellow hunters, but Forsman and Hermansson have stretched the limits. For five of the past eight years, the two hunters from Arvika, Sweden, have traveled to Finland _ Minnesota _ to hunt with the Mead family.
The Swedes take their hunting seriously, but this hunt is all wrapped up in a 3,900-mile friendship with the Meads that dates back to the mid-1980s.
"The hunt," said Hermansson, 42, "might have been an excuse to come and see them."
The Minnesota deer hunt had its roots in 1984, when Betsey Mead traveled to Arvika for a year as a foreign exchange student. She stayed with the Connie and Karin Gustavsson family in Arvika and became fast friends with their daughter, Camilla Gustavsson.
In 2001, Kurt and Betsey Mead, along with young daughters Yarrow and Lily, traveled to Sweden to visit Camilla and her parents. Camilla and Anders had by then become a couple, so the Meads came to know Anders, too.
Then a crazy thing happened.
"(The Gustavssons) suggested we move to Sweden," Kurt Mead said. "We came home and said, 'Yes.' "
The Meads spent 2008-09 in Arvika, an extended community of 30,000 that lies at the same latitude as Homer, Alaska. Betsey taught English. Kurt worked as a carpenter. During that visit, they met Anders' uncle, Ulf Forsman. Among other things, Forsman was a moose hunter and took Kurt Mead moose hunting.
Somewhere in that hunting scenario, the Meads suggested that Forsman and Hermansson should come to Finland to hunt whitetails.
"We were talking in the car and around the fire, and it was a pretty natural connection," Kurt Mead said.
