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Finland (pronounced /ˈfɪnlənd/ (help·info)), officially the Republic of Finland[4] Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info), is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden on the west, Norway on the north and Russia on the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is Helsinki.

Around 5.4 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern part of the country.[1] It is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. The native language of nearly all of the population is Finnish, which is part of the Finno-Ugric language family and is most closely related to Estonian. The language is one of only four official EU languages not of Indo-European origin. The second official language of Finland – Swedish – is the native language of 5.5% of the population.[5] Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in Helsinki and local governments in 342 municipalities.[6] A total of about one million residents live in the Greater Helsinki area (which includes Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen, and Vantaa), and a third of the country's GDP is produced there. Other major cities include Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Kuopio, and Lahti.

Finland was historically a part of Sweden and from 1809 an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire. Finland's declaration of independence from Russia in 1917