Finland gave Europe universal suffrage—and two unrelated names
Finland, a Nordic republic of 5.7 million with capital Helsinki, borders Sweden, Norway, and Russia between the Gulfs of Bothnia and Finland. Settled by about 9000 BCE after the Ice Age, it swung from Swedish realm to Russian grand duchy before 1917 independence, 1918 civil war, and 1919 republic confirmation.
Finnish is the first language of 83.5 percent of residents and Swedish of 5 percent, and both are official. Southern Finland has a humid continental climate that turns boreal further north, and boreal forest covers most of the land, dotted with more than 180,000 recorded lakes. Estonia lies across the southern gulf.
Stone Age cultures are told apart by their pottery styles, and Bronze and Iron Age peoples traded with neighbours around Fennoscandia and the Baltic. From the mid-thirteenth century, during the Northern Crusades, the land came under Swedish rule. Russia took it in the Finnish War of 1809 and ran it as an autonomous grand duchy, a period when Finnish art flourished and a movement for independence took shape. The Whites, who were anticommunist, won the civil war that followed the 1917 declaration.
In the Second World War Finland fought two wars against Moscow, the Winter War and then the Continuation War, followed by one against Germany in the Lapland War, losing territory but keeping its democracy. Officially neutral through the Cold War, it joined the EU in 1995, the euro in 1999 and NATO in 2023 after Russia invaded Ukraine. In 1906 it became the first European country with universal suffrage and the first anywhere to let every adult stand for office. It stayed mostly rural until the 1950s, then industrialised quickly and built a Nordic welfare state; it now scores highly on education, competitiveness and happiness.
The country has two unrelated names. Suomi, used in Finnic languages, is no longer thought to come from suo, mire, or suomu, scale; scholars now connect it with Häme, a province, and with sápmi, what the Sámi call themselves, perhaps from a shared Finno-Samic term. Finland comes from Old Norse finnr, a word for northern neighbours that meant the Sámi to Norwegians and south-western Finns to Swedes.
Source: Finland
