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Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is Helsinki.

Around 5.3 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern part of the country. It is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. The native language of nearly all of the population is Finnish, which is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family and most closely related to Estonian. The language is one of only four official EU languages not of Indo-European origin. The second official language of Finland – Swedish – is the native language of 5.5 percent of the population.

Finland is well placed in many international comparisons of national performance such as the share of high-technology manufacturing and health care.
The name Suomi (Finnish for "Finland") has uncertain origins but a candidate for a cognate is the Proto-Baltic word *zeme, meaning "land". In addition to the close relatives of Finnish (the Baltic-Finnic languages), this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian. According to an earlier theory the name was derived from suomaa (fen land) or suoniemi (fen cape).


Among the first documents to mention "a land of the Finns" are two rune-stones. There is one in Söderby, Sweden, with the inscription finlont (U 582) and one in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, with the inscription finlandi (G 319), dating from the 11th century.

According to archaeological evidence, the area now comprising Finland was settled at the latest around 8500 BCE during the Stone Age as the ice shield of the last ice age receded. The artifacts the first settlers left behind present characteristics that are shared with those found in Estonia, Russia and Norway. The earliest people were hunter-gatherers, using stone tools. There is also evidence of carved stone animal heads. The first pottery appeared in 3000 BCE when settlers from the East brought in the Comb Ceramic culture. The arrival of the Corded Ware culture in southern coastal Finland between 3,000–2,500 BCE coincided with the start of agriculture. Even with the introduction of agriculture, hunting and fishing continued to be important parts of the subsistence economy, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

The Bronze Age (1500–500 BCE) and Iron Age (500 BCE–1200 CE) were characterised by extensive contacts with other cultures in the Fennoscandian and Baltic regions.
The first verifiable written documents appeared in the 12th century.

Finland is a country of thousands of lakes and islands – 187,888 lakes (larger than 500 m²) and 179,584 islands. One of these lakes, Saimaa, is the fourth largest in Europe. The Finnish landscape is mostly flat with few hills, and its highest point, the Halti at 1,324 metres, is found in the extreme north of Lapland at the border between Finland and Norway.
The landscape is covered mostly (seventy-five percent of land area) by coniferous taiga forests and fens, with little arable land.
The greater part of the islands are found in the southwest in the Archipelago Sea, part of the archipelago of the Åland Islands, and along the southern coast in the Gulf of Finland.

Finland is one of the few countries in the world whose surface area is still expanding. Owing to the post-glacial rebound that has been taking place since the last ice age, the surface area of the country is expanding by about 7 square kilometres (2.70 sq mi) a year.



Phytogeographically, Finland is shared between the Arctic, central European and northern European provinces of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. According to the WWF, the territory of Finland can be subdivided into three ecoregions: the Scandinavian and Russian taiga, Sarmatic mixed forests and Scandinavian Montane Birch forest and grasslands. Actual tundra with permafrost is not found in Finland except for a narrow area in the extreme north. Similarly, temperate broadleaf mixed forests, with oak, elm, hazel and maple growing in the wild, are found only in the narrow area extreme south.
The Halti Tundra, Lapland, Finland
All terrestrial life in Finland was completely wiped out during the last ice age that ended some 10,000 years ago, following the retreat of the glaciers and the appearance of vegetation. Today, there are over 1,200 species of vascular plant, 800 bryophytes and 1,000 lichen species in Finland, with flora being richest in the southern parts of the country. Plant life, like most of the Finnish ecology, is well adapted to tolerate the contrasting seasons and extreme weather. Many plant species, such as the Scots pine, spruce, and birch, spread throughout Finland from Norway and only reached the western coast less than three millennia ago.

Similarly, Finland has a diverse and extensive range of fauna. There are at least sixty native mammalian species, 248 breeding bird species, over seventy fish species and eleven reptile and frog species present today, many migrating from neighboring countries thousands of years ago.


The endangered Saimaa Ringed Seal, one of only three lake seal species in the world, exists only in the Saimaa lake system of southeastern Finland, down to only 300 seals today. It has become the emblem of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation. Due to extensive hunting, animals such as deer, Golden eagle, Brown bear and Eurasian lynx all experienced significant declines in population. Their numbers have increased again in the 2000s, mainly as a result of careful conservation and the establishment of vast national parks.
The Finnish climate is suitable for grain farming in the southernmost regions, but not further north.

Finland has a humid and cool semi continental climate. The climate type in southern Finland is a northern temperate climate. Winters of southern Finland are usually 4–5 months long, and the snow covers the land about 4 months of every year, and in the southern coast, it can melt many times during winter, and then come again. In Northern Finland, particularly in the Province of Lapland, a subarctic climate dominates, characterized by cold – occasionally severe – winters and relatively warm summers. Winters in north Finland are nearly 7 months long, and snow covers the land almost 6–7 months every year. Summers in the north are quite short, only 2–3 months.
The main factor influencing Finland's climate is the country's geographical position between the 60th and 70th northern parallels in the Eurasian continent's coastal zone, which shows characteristics of both a maritime and a continental climate, depending on the direction of air flow. Finland is near enough to the Atlantic Ocean to be continuously warmed by the Gulf Stream, which explains the unusually warm climate considering the absolute latitude.

A quarter of Finland's territory lies above the Arctic Circle and the midnight sun can be experienced – for more days, the farther north one travels. At Finland's northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 consecutive days during summer, and does not rise at all for 51 days during winter.


Finland currently numbers 5,332,671 inhabitants and has an average population density of 17 inhabitants per square kilometre. This makes it, after Norway and Iceland, the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Finland's population has always been concentrated in the southern parts of the country, a phenomenon even more pronounced after 20th century urbanisation. The biggest and most important cities in Finland are the cities of the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area – Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa. Other large cities include Tampere, Turku and Oulu.
Most of the Finnish people (92 percent) speak Finnish as their mother tongue.

The largest minority language and the second official language is Swedish spoken by 5.6 percent of the population. Other minority languages are Russian , Estonian , Finnish Romani, and Finnish Sign Language . To the north, in Lapland, are also the Sami people, numbering around 7,000 and recognized as an indigenous people. About a quarter of them speak a Sami language as their mother tongue. There are three Sami languages that are spoken in Finland: Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami. The right of the minority groups to cherish their culture and language is protected by the constitution.

Most Finns are members of the shrinking Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland . The second largest and growing group of 16.9 percent of the population has no religious affiliation. A small minority belong to the Finnish Orthodox Church . Other Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church in Finland are significantly smaller, as are the Muslim, Jewish and other non-Christian communities .

During the prehistoric, ancient and early mediaeval periods of Finnish history, Finnish paganism was the majority religion. It has been revived recently through the form of Finnish neopaganism.

The main Lutheran and Orthodox churches are constitutional national churches of Finland with special roles such as in state ceremonies and schools.