Finland, officially the Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomi, Suomen tasavalta, Swedish: Republiken Finland ), is a Nordic country situated in Northern Europe. It is bordered with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, Norway to the north and Estonia to the South over the Gulf of Finland.
Previously part of Sweden and from 1809 autonomous in the Russian Empire, Finland declared its independence in 1917. Today, Finland is a democratic republic with parliamentarism and a member state of the United Nations and the European Union.
Finland has a population of 5,282,583 people spread over 338,145 square kilometres (130,559 square miles) making it the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. As their mother tongue, most Finns speak Finnish, one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin, with the second official language Swedish spoken by a 5.5 percent minority.
Finland is eleventh on the United Nations' Human Development Index and ranked as the sixth happiest nation in the world. According to the World Audit Democracy profile, Finland is the freest nation in the world, in terms of civil liberties, freedom of the press, low corruption levels and political rights.
