Finland borders Sweden to the west, Norway to the north and Russia to the east, and is predominantly flat and wet, the exception being where it borders Norway. Halti, a mountain which the two countries share, is Finland’s highest point at 1,324 metres (4,344 ft).

The boggy landscape has 180,000 recorded lakes, and includes large swathes of Coniferous forests which consist mainly of pine, spruce and larch, and although reindeer are common around the Northern Lakeland and Lapland, the country’s national animal is the brown bear.

The coastline has so many islands that it’s difficult to know what the true number is as it all depends on what you call an island, but whatever is, there are more around Finland than there are in the Swedish Archipelago.

The land was first settled after the last ice age and most of it is sparsely populated. Helsinki, the capital, has a population of around 1.3 million people in its urban area which is a large percentage of the country’s 5.6 million inhabitants. Other places that attract visitors are Turku, Tampere and the Aland Islands in the Archipelago Sea – but I mustn’t forget Lapland around Christmastime.

Historically, Finland was under Swedish rule between the 12^th/13^th and 18^th centuries, and no doubt would account for the fact that, amongst its vast majority of ethnic Finns, are also a significant number of Swedes. The end of Swedish rule was a prolonged affair but came to a final conclusion when the Finnish War between Sweden and Russia in 1809 left Finland as an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire.

Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Finland declared independence and officially became a republic in 1919. WWII saw the country at war against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and although the province of Karelia was lost to the USSR at the end of it, the country was able to hold on to its independence.

The Cold War saw Finland remain neutral and retaining close economic ties with the Soviet Union, but in 1995 after the Iron Curtain came down, the country joined the European Union. Relations with Russia deteriorated when Finland joined NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.