9th October 2025 9th October 2025 By Victor Rouă In

10 Interesting Facts You Should Know About Finland

Finland (known in Finnish as Suomi) is a beautiful country situated in Northern Europe, more specifically in Fennoscandia (and not Scandinavia as it is sometimes mistakenly labelled). In this brief article, 10 interesting facts that you should know about it are enlisted below.

Image source: www.pixabay.com

10. Finland is a very densely forested country, with over 60% of its territory being woodlands.

9. Despite the fact that Finland is nicknamed ‘the land of the thousand lakes’, the country has more than 187,000 lakes, making the aforementioned nickname a clear understatement! Furthermore, the name of the country was derived from Old Norse (more specifically from the term ‘Finn’) in English, initially appearing on Swedish runestones. In the past, namely during the High Middle Ages (as recorded in 12th and 13th century historical sources) the term ‘Finland’ was used to refer to a relatively small coastal region in the proximity of the city of Turku, that is in the south-west of the country. Below you can watch an informative video embedded via YouTube by the channel Name Explain on the name of the country:

8. The official language of Finland is Finnish (the other is Swedish, a North Germanic language), a Finno-Ugric language, part of the Baltic-Finnic brach of this language family, and is closely related to Estonian but also to the Sami and Kven languages (which are spoken in the neighbouring countries of Sweden and Norway). There are circa five million native speakers of Finnish worldwide.

7. The capital of Finland is Helsinki (known as Helsingfors in Swedish) which is situated in the south of the country. Helsinki is also the most populous city of Finland with over 1.6 million people living in its larger metropolitan area.

6. Finland joined the European Union (EU) in 1995 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 2023. It is also part of the Nordic Council (Norden) since 1955, part of the Schengen Area since 2001 (the same year in which Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland became part of the Schengen Area), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 1969.

5. The flag of the country is a blue cross over a white background.

4. Back in the Viking Age, some Finns were also Vikings (this term denoting an occupation or a profession rather than an ethnic label), that is some ethnic Finns went a Viking as well, joining groups of Vikings from Scandinavia proper (i.e. either Norwegian Vikings or Swedish Vikings).

3. The Kalevala is the national epic of the country. This epic also inspired renowned British high-fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien to write The Story of Kullervo.

2. Finland’s music scene is a complex and broad one, with artists and bands spanning multiple genres, ranging from progressive rock (e.g. Tabula Rasa), hard rock (e.g. Hanoi Rocks) to heavy metal (e.g. Nightwish and Tarja Turunen or Apocalyptica) or jazz (e.g. Pekka Pöyry) as well as many other genres and sub-genres of music.

1. The Finnish coat of arms depicts a crowned lion with a sword. The Finnish coat of arms has a long history, going back to circa 1580.

Documentation sources and external links:

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