Baltic Travel Agent Specialists
Finland,
officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in
Northern Europe. It has borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the
east, and Norway to the north, while Estonia lies to its south across
the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is Helsinki.
Finland has a population of 5,302,778 people, spread over an area of
338,145 square kilometres (130,559 square miles). Finland is the eighth
largest country in Europe in terms of area, with a low population density
of 16 people per square kilometer, making it the most sparsely populated
country in the European Union. The majority of the population is concentrated
in the southern part of the country. As their mother tongue, most Finns
speak Finnish, one of the few official languages of the European Union
that is not of Indo-European origin. The second official language, Swedish,
is spoken natively by a 5.5 percent minority.
Formerly part of Sweden and from 1809 an autonomous Grand Duchy within
the Russian Empire, Finland declared its independence in 1917. Today,
Finland is a democratic, parliamentary republic and has been a member
state of the United Nations since 1955 and the European Union since
1995. Finland has thriving services and manufacturing sectors and is
a highly democratic welfare state with low levels of corruption, consistently
ranking at or near the top in international comparisons of national
performance.
Finland is eleventh on the United Nations' Human Development Index and
ranked as the sixth happiest nation in the world. According to the World
Audit Democracy profile, Finland is the freest nation in the world in
terms of civil liberties, freedom of the press, low corruption levels
and high levels of political rights. Finland is rated the sixth most
peaceful country in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and
since 1945, Finland has been at peace, adopting neutrality in wartime.
Finland was rated the best country to live in by Reader's Digest study
released in October 2007, which looked at issues such as quality of
drinking water and greenhouse gas emissions as well as factors such
as education and income.
HELSINKI
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