FINLAND  "Finland is a little country in the middle of nowhere". This is what most of the people, who 
don´t know anything about Finland, think.  
Yeah, right, Finland really is such a little country. Surface area of Finland is about 338,000 square kilometres. But in the middle of nowhere...? Well,  I don´t really think so.... 
 Finland is bounded on the north by Norway, on the east by Russia, on the south by Russia and the Gulf of Finland, on the southwest by the Baltic Sea, and on the west by the Gulf of Bothnia and Sweden. 
There are many beautiful groups of islands in Baltic Sea. 
About two thirds of Finland is covered by forests and 10% is water.  There are 187,888 lakes here!!!  
There aren´t mountains here in Finland, only in Lapland (the northest part of Finland)  there are some fells.  The highest of them is Halti (about 1300 cm). 
Summers in Finland are warm and winters are usually quite cold and it snows in winter here. 
The capital of Finland is Helsinki (population 500 000), other cities are for examble Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Savonlinna, Kuopio and Rovaniemi. 
 
There lives about 5.1 million persons here in Finland.  Official languages are Finnish (93,6%) and Swedish (6,4%).  Swedish is spoken mostly in the west southwest parts of Finland. There are also language called Sami, which is spoken by a small minority in Lapland.   
National churches are the Lutheran Church and the Greek Orthodox Church.  
Finland became independent in 1917.  After that it was part of Russia and earlier after that Finland was part of Sweden. 

Finns are a little bit shy but very friendly people. They value loyalty and reliability and take promises seriously. They love their forests and lakes and nature at all.  They are proud that their language, culture, and national identity have survived centuries of domination by other powers. 
Finns enjoy a high standard of living. Health care and health-care facilities are excellent and education is priority.  The literacy rate is nearly 100% and life expectancy averages 76 years. 
In Finland women´s rights are matter of course and men and women are equal. 

The biggest parts of industry in Finland are metal and forest industry. 

In Finland there is parliamentary democracy (one chamber of 200 members), and the president of rebublic is Martti Ahtisaari.  Finland is a member of European Union. 

There would be plenty to say about Finnish culture, but all I say here is that Finnish culture is 
very high-quality and it comprises music, theatre, opera, ballet, literature, etc... etc...  

The End I hope you learned something, If you´d like to ask something, or found mistakes on the text (there must be plenty of them!),  just send me mail