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Finland officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe bordered by Sweden to the west, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east; Estonia lies to the south across the Gulf of Finland. Finland is part of the geographic region of Fennoscandia, which also includesScandinavia and parts of Russia. Visit Finland 

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In 2013, Finland's population was around 5.5 million, with the majority living in its southern regions.

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In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital Helsinki, local governments in 317 municipalities, and an autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, which produces a third of the country's GDP. Other large cities include Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Lahti, and Kuopio.
From the late 12th century until 1809, Finland was part of Sweden, a legacy reflected in the prevalence of the Swedish language and its official status. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson (1791–1858), "Swedes we are no-longer, Russians we do not want to become, let us therefore be Finns", the Finnish national identity started to establish. However, Finland was still incorporated into the Russian Empire as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, until the Russian Revolution of 1917 prompted the Finnish Declaration of Independence.

This was followed by the Finnish Civil War in which the pro-Bolshevik Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic was defeated by the pro-conservative "Whites" with support from the German Empire. After a brief attempt to establish a kingdom, the country became a republic. In World War II, Finnish forces fought in three separate conflicts: the Winter War (1939–1940) and Continuation War (1941–1944) against the Soviet Union, and the Lapland War (1944–1945) against Nazi Germany.

Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and established an official policy of neutrality. It joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1969, the European Union in 1995, and the Eurozone at its inception in 1999.
Finland was a relative latecomer to industrialisation, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. It rapidly developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity and one of the highest per capita incomes in the world. However, since 2012 Finnish GDP growth has been negative, with preceding peak of -8% in 2009.
Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life, and human development. In 2015, Finland is ranked first in the World Human Capital and the Press Freedom Index, and as the most stable country in the world in the Failed States Index. In 2010, Newsweek chose Finland as the best country in the world.
The country has a long legacy of social progressivism, in 1906, before gaining the independence, it became the second nation in the world to give the right to vote to all adult citizens and the first in the world to give full suffrage to all adult citizens. About 73.9% of Finns were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland in 2014; nevertheless, the Lutheran Church estimates that approximately only 2% of its members attend church services weekly.
The first known written appearance of the name Finland is thought to be on three rune-stones. Two were found in the Swedish province of Uppland and have the inscription finlonti (U 582). The third was found in Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It has the inscription finlandi (G 319) and dates from the 13th century. The name can be assumed to be related to the tribe name Finns, which is mentioned first known time AD 98 (disputed meaning).
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 threeecoregions: the Scandinavian and Russian taiga, Sarmatic mixed forests, and Scandinavian Montane Birch forest and grasslands. Taiga covers most of Finland from northern regions of southern provinces to the north of Lapland.

On the southwestern coast, south of the Helsinki-Rauma line, forests are characterized by mixed forests, that are more typical in the Baltic region. In the extreme north of Finland, near the tree line and Arctic Ocean, Montane Birch forests are common.
Similarly, Finland has a diverse and extensive range of fauna. There are at least sixty native mammalian species, 248 breeding bird species, over 70 fish species, and 11 reptile and frog species present today, many migrating from neighboring countries thousands of years ago. Large and widely recognized wildlife mammals found in Finland are the brown bear (the national animal), gray wolf, wolverine, andelk. Three of the more striking birds are the whooper swan, a large European swan and the national bird of Finland; the capercaillie, a large, black-plumaged member of the grouse family; and the European eagle-owl. The latter is considered an indicator of old-growth forest connectivity, and has been declining because of landscape fragmentation.

The most common breeding birds are the willow warbler, common chaffinch, and redwing. Of some seventy species of freshwater fish, the northern pike, perch, and others are plentiful.Atlantic salmon remains the favourite of fly rod enthusiasts.
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.
Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Finland. Finnish predominates nationwide while Swedish is spoken in some coastal areas in the west and south and in the autonomous region of Åland. The Sami language is an official language in northern Lapland. Also Finnish Romani and Finnish Sign Language are recognized in the constitution. The Nordic languages and Karelian are also specially treated in some contexts.
The native language of 90% of the population is Finnish, which is part of the Finnic subgroup of the Uralic languages. The language is one of only four official EU languages not of Indo-European origin. Finnish is closely related to Karelian andEstonian and more remotely to the Sami languages and Hungarian.
Swedish is the native language of 5% of the population (Swedish-speaking Finns),
To the north, in Lapland, are 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. The Sami languages that are spoken in Finland areNorthern Sami, Inari Sami, and Skolt Sami.

Finnish Romani is spoken by some 5,000–6,000 people. There are two sign languages: Finnish Sign Language, spoken natively by 4,000–5,000 people, and Finland-Swedish Sign Language, spoken natively by about 150 people. Tatar language is spoken by a Finnish Tatar minority of about 800 people who moved to Finland mainly during the Russian rule from the 1870s until the 1920s.
The rights of minority groups (in particular Sami, Swedish speakers, and Romani people) are protected by the constitution.
Immigrant languages include Russian (1.1%), Estonian (0.6%), Somali, English, and Arabic.
The best-known foreign languages are English (63%), German (18%), and French (3%). English is studied by most pupils as a compulsory subject from the third or fifth grade (at 9 or 11 years of age respectively) in the comprehensive school (in some schools other languages can be chosen instead). German, French, and Russian can be studied as second foreign languages from the eighth grade (at 14 years of age; some schools may offer other options). A third foreign language may be studied in upper secondary school or university (at 16 years of age or over).
Norwegian and, to some extent, Danish are mutually intelligible with Swedish and are thus understood by a significant minority, although studied only slightly in school. Visit Finland
Finnish cuisine is notable for generally combining traditional country fare and haute cuisine with contemporary style cooking. Fish and meat play a prominent role in traditional Finnish dishes from the western part of the country, while the dishes from the eastern part have traditionally included various vegetables and mushrooms. Refugees from Karelia contributed to foods in eastern Finland. Visit Finland
Finnish foods often use wholemeal products (rye, barley, oats) and berries (such asbilberries, lingonberries, cloudberries, and sea buckthorn). Milk and its derivatives like buttermilk are commonly used as food, drink, or in various recipes. Variousturnips were common in traditional cooking, but were replaced with the potato after its introduction in the 18th century. Visit Finland

According to the statistics, red meat consumption has risen, but still Finns eat less beef than many other nations, and more fish and poultry. This is mainly because of the high cost of meat in Finland.
All official holidays in Finland are established by Acts of Parliament. Christian holidays include Christmas, New Year's Day,Epiphany, Easter, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Midsummer Day (St. John's Day), and All Saints' Day, while secular holidays include May Day, Independence Day, New Year's Day, and Midsummer. Christmas is the most extensively celebrated, and at least 24 to 26 December is taken as a holiday. Visit Finland
Written Finnish could be said to have existed since Mikael Agricola translated the New Testament into Finnish during the Protestant Reformation, but few notable works of literature were written until the nineteenth century and the beginning of a Finnish national Romantic Movement. This prompted Elias Lönnrot to collect Finnish and Karelian folk poetry and arrange and publish them as the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. The era saw a rise of poets and novelists who wrote in Finnish, notably Aleksis Kivi and Eino Leino. Many writers of the national awakening wrote in Swedish, such as the national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg and Zachris Topelius. Visit Finland
After Finland became independent, there was a rise of modernist writers, most famously the Finnish-speaking Mika Waltari and Swedish-speaking Edith Södergran. Frans Eemil Sillanpää was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1939. The Second World Warprompted a return to more national interests in comparison to a more international line of thought, characterized by Väinö Linna. Besides Kalevala and Waltari, the Swedish-speaking Tove Jansson is the most translated Finnish writer. Popular modern writers include Arto Paasilinna, Ilkka Remes, Kari Hotakainen, Sofi Oksanen, and Jari Tervo, while the best novel is annually awarded the prestigious Finlandia Prize. Visit Finland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia