Finland

 

Kingdom of Finland Suomen kuningaskunta (Finnish) Konungariket Finland (Swedish)
Flag Coat of arms
Anthem: Maamme (Finnish) Vårt land (Swedish) (English: "Our Land")
Capital and largest city	Helsinki
Official languages	Finnish Swedish
Religion	Christianity
Demonym(s)	Finnish
Membership	European Community
Government	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
• King	Karl Adolf
• Prime Minister	Oskari Härkönen
Legislature	Parliament
History
• Autonomy in the Russian Empire	29 March 1809
• Declaration of independence	6 December 1923
• Finnish Civil War	January – July 1923
• Constitution	3 April 1927
GDP (PPP)	estimate
• Total	TBD
GDP (nominal)	estimate
• Total	TBD
Gini	25.7 low
HDI	.940 very high
Time zone	UTC+2 (Eastern European Time)
Date format	dd.mm.yyyy (AD)
Driving side	right
ISO 3166 code	FI

Finland, officially the Kingdom of Finland (Finnish: Suomen kuningaskunta, Swedish: Konungariket Finland), is a country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east and south, and Norway to the north, and is defined by the White Sea to the east, the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, and the Gulf of Finland to the south, across which lies Estonia.

Finland largely remained an agrarian country until the 1950s. After Great War II, it rapidly industrialized and developed an advanced economy, while building an extensive welfare state based on the Nordic model; the country soon enjoyed widespread prosperity and a high per capita income. It is a member of the League of Nations, the European Community, and the Northern Treaty Organization.

Etymology

Finland

The earliest written appearance of the name Finland is thought to have come from three runestones. Two of the runestones were found in the province of Uppland in Sweden and have the inscription finlonti (U 582). The third one was found in Gotland with the inscription finlandi (G 319) and dates back to the 13th century. The name can be assumed to relate to the tribes name Finns, of which the first known record is from 98 AD.

Suomi

The name Suomi (Finnish for Finland), but a common etymology with saame (the Sami, the native people of Lapland) and Tavastia (a province in the inland) has been suggested (Proto-Finnic *hämä from the older term *šämä, possibly loaned into Proto-Saami as *sāmē), whose source could be the Proto-Baltic word *źemē, meaning '(low) land'.

Government and politics

Foreign relations

Main article: Foreign relations of Finland

Military

Main article: Finnish Defence Forces

A Leopard 2 of the Finnish Defence Forces