Finland

Finland is a country in the north of Europe.

It has lots of trees and lots of lakes. Winters are long and snowy. The capital city is called Helsinki. In Finnish, the country is called Suomi.

Finland is in northern Europe, between Sweden, Norway and Russia, with the Baltic Sea to the south and west. Nearly two-thirds of the land is covered by thick forest, and there are tens of thousands of lakes. From the air, Finland looks like a jigsaw puzzle of blue and green.

About one-third of Finland lies north of the Arctic Circle. Winter is the longest season. Most of the 5.7 million people live in the south, and about one in five lives in and around Helsinki, the capital. In Finnish, the country is called Suomi.

Finland is one of the world's most northern countries. Nearly two-thirds of it is covered by thick woodland, which Britannica says makes it the most densely forested country in Europe, and inland waters take up almost a tenth of its area. It borders Norway to the north, Russia to the east and Sweden to the northwest, with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the southwest; its area includes the autonomous Åland Islands.

About a third of the country, most of the region of Lappi (Lapland), lies north of the Arctic Circle. Because of the harsh northern climate, most people live in the southern third, and about one-fifth live in and around Helsinki, continental Europe's northernmost capital. Statistics Finland counted 5,652,881 people on 31 December 2025, 23.8 percent of them aged 65 or over. Finland is a republic with a one-house Parliament of 200 members.

Helsinki is the biggest city in Finland.

It is by the sea. Near Helsinki, a big old fort stands on some islands. Turku was once the capital. It has a river and a big church.

Helsinki, the capital, is home to about 694,000 people (2025). It sits on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. On a group of islands at the entrance to Helsinki's harbor stands Suomenlinna, a sea fortress built by Sweden in the 1700s. Today it is a World Heritage Site.

Turku, in the southwest, was Finland's capital until 1812, when Helsinki was chosen instead. Its cathedral stands beside the Aura River.

The harsh northern climate concentrates people in the southern third of the country, and about one-fifth live in and around Helsinki, on the Gulf of Finland. The city itself (about 694,000 people in 2025) is far larger than Tampere (about 255,000 in 2024) or Turku (about 210,000 in 2025). Turku was the capital until 1812, when, under Russian rule, Tsar Alexander I moved the capital to Helsinki.

The Fortress of Suomenlinna, built by Sweden in the second half of the 18th century on islands at the entrance to Helsinki's harbor, was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1991 as an especially interesting example of European military architecture of its time. During the Crimean War an Anglo-French fleet attacked it (then called Viapori) along with the Åland Islands and coastal towns. Turku, the seat of the archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, sits on the Aura River.

Finland has many, many lakes.

Giant sheets of ice once covered the land. When the ice melted, it left long, winding hills of sand. Today there are lakes almost everywhere. In summer in the north, the sun shines all night. In winter, it hardly comes up at all.

Finland's rock is very old granite. During the Ice Age, giant glaciers, sometimes kilometers thick, pressed the land down. When they melted, they left long winding ridges of sand and gravel called eskers. Today Finland has tens of thousands of lakes. The biggest lake, Saimaa, covers about 4,400 square kilometers.

The land is still slowly rising now that the heavy ice is gone, about 1 centimeter a year in one narrow part of the Gulf of Bothnia. North of the Arctic Circle, Lapland has about two months of midnight sun in summer, and in winter the polar night lasts more than 50 days.

Finland rests on a worn-down shield of Precambrian rock, mainly granite. Ice Age glaciers depressed the crust by many hundreds of feet; since they melted, the land has been rising, by about 10 mm a year in the narrow part of the Gulf of Bothnia, slowly turning old sea floor into dry land. Retreating ice left eskers and the Salpausselkä ridges, three parallel ridges arcing across the south. The coastline, about 4,600 km long, is deeply indented and dotted with thousands of islands.

Britannica counts some 56,000 lakes; Saimaa, the largest, covers about 4,400 km² and drains to Lake Ladoga in Russia. The Kemi, 550 km, is the longest river. The few mountains are in the far northwest, near the borders with Sweden and Norway; Britannica gives Mount Halti, 1,328 m, as Finland's highest mountain. North of the Arctic Circle winters are severe, down to about −30 °C, with more than 50 days of polar night, while Lapland has about two months of midnight sun; air warmed by the Baltic and the Gulf Stream keeps Finland milder than places at similar latitudes in Siberia and Greenland.

Bears, wolves and lynx live in Finland's forests.

Moose walk among the trees. In the north, people look after reindeer. A very special seal lives in one big lake.

Finland's forests are home to bears, elk (also called moose), wolves, wolverines and lynx. In the north there are reindeer, but they are domesticated: wild reindeer have almost disappeared. Arctic terns and gulls nest on the coastal islands, and many birds fly south for the winter.

The Saimaa ringed seal lives only in Finland, in Lake Saimaa. It became a freshwater seal about 8,000 years ago, when the lakes lost their link to the sea. It is endangered, and people work hard to protect it. Today there are about 530 of these seals.

Native woodland mammals include the bear, elk, wolf, wolverine and lynx; wild reindeer have almost disappeared, and those in the north are domesticated. Seabirds such as black-backed gulls and Arctic terns nest in great numbers on the coastal islands, and Britannica notes that Finland is the breeding site for the majority of the world's goldeneyes and broad-billed sandpipers. Salmon, trout and whitefish are relatively abundant in the northern rivers, and Baltic herring is the most common sea fish.

The endangered Saimaa ringed seal lives only in Lake Saimaa. Metsähallitus (Parks & Wildlife Finland) describes it as a distinct species whose lineage split from other ringed seals at least 60,000 years ago; the eastern Finnish lakes lost their link to the Baltic about 8,000 years ago. Hunting, fish traps and winter water-level changes that collapsed its lairs cut it to 180–200 animals in the late 1980s; with protection it has recovered to a present estimate of about 530.

About 5.7 million people live in Finland.

Most people speak Finnish. Some people speak Swedish. In the far north, Sami people have their own languages. Most people in Finland enjoy a hot sauna.

About 5.7 million people live in Finland, and more than four out of five live in towns and cities. Finland has two national languages: nearly nine in ten people speak Finnish, and a smaller group speaks Swedish, mostly along the coasts and on the Åland Islands. The Sami, an Indigenous people of the far north, speak three Sami languages in Finland.

The sauna is part of life for most people in Finland, at home or in public saunas. There are about 3.3 million saunas! In autumn the woods are full of edible mushrooms, northern bogs give cloudberries, and at Midsummer people light bonfires.

Finland is officially bilingual. Nearly nine-tenths of people speak Finnish, a Uralic language, and the Swedish-speaking population lives mainly on the south, southwest and west coasts and in Åland, where Swedish is the only official language. Roughly half of the small Sami population lives in the Sami Homeland in northern Lappi; a 1995 constitutional amendment recognized the Sami as an Indigenous people, and three of the 11 Sami languages, North, Inari and Skolt Sami, are spoken in Finland.

Most people belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, though few attend regularly; the Orthodox Church of Finland is the other national church, and small Jewish and Muslim communities date from the 19th century. UNESCO added sauna culture to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2020, noting 3.3 million saunas in a country of 5.5 million people. In autumn the woods are rich in edible fungi, and northern bogs yield cloudberries; Christmas foods include rice porridge with milk and cinnamon.