Finland Florist
Online Flower Shop

Helsinki Cathedral.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Finland is a Nordic country and democracy situated in northern Europe. It borders Sweden on the west, Russia on the east, and Norway on the north The capital city is Helsinki. Around 5.3 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern part of the country. 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 for most of the population is Finnish, and is one of only four official EU languages not of Indo-European origin. The second official language of Finland, Swedish, is the mother tongue of 5.5 percent of the population. Finland is a democratic, parliamentary republic with a mostly Helsinki-based central government and local governments in 348 municipalities. A total of a million residents live in Greater Helsinki area (including 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 a relative latecomer to industrialization, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. Thereafter economic development was rapid, and the country reached the world's top income levels in the 1970s. Between 1970 and 1990, Finland built an extensive welfare state. In the aftermath of the severe depression of the early 1990s, successive governments have reformed the Finnish economic system through some privatisation, deregulation, and tax cuts.