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Finland, officially the Republic of Finland"Republic of Finland", or "Suomen tasavalta" in Finnish and "Republiken Finland" in Swedish, is the long protocol name, which is not defined by the law. Legislation only recognizes the short name. (Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland ), is a Nordic country situated in the Scandinavian portion of Northern Europe. It has borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, and Norway to the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is Helsinki.
Finland has a population of 5,302,778 people, spread over an area of 338,145 square kilometres (130,559 square miles). Finland is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area, with a low population density of 16 people per square kilometer, making it the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. The majority of the population is concentrated in the southern part of the country. 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. The second official language, Swedish, is spoken natively by a 5.5 percent minority.The population of Finland in 2006. Statistics Finland (2006-12-31). Retrieved on 2007-09-04.
Formerly part of Sweden and from 1809 an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire, Finland declared its independence in 1917. Today, Finland is a democratic, parliamentary republic and has been a member state of the United Nations since 1955 and the European Union since 1995. Finland has thriving services and manufacturing sectors and is a highly democratic welfare state with low levels of corruption, consistently ranking at or near the top in international comparisons of national performance.
Finland is eleventh on the United Nations\' Human Development IndexHuman Development Report. United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved on 2007-01-29. and ranked as the sixth happiest nation in the world.Psychologist Produces The First-ever \'World Map Of Happiness\'. Science Daily (2006-11-14). Retrieved on 2007-01-29. 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 high levels of political rights.Finland: World Audit Democracy Profile. WorldAudit.org. Retrieved on 2007-06-11. Finland is rated the sixth most peaceful country in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit,Global Peace Rankings. Vision Of Humanity. Retrieved on 2007-08-20. and since 1945, Finland has been at peace, adopting neutrality in wartime.
Finland was rated the best country to live in by Reader\'s Digest study released in October 2007, which looked at issues such as quality of drinking water and greenhouse gas emissions as well as factors such as education and income.Reader\'s Digest study says Finland best for living
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Prehistoric red ochre painted rock art of moose, human figures and boats in Astuvansalmi in Ristiina, the Southern Savonia region from ca. 3800–2200 BCE.The Rock paintings of Astuvansalmi at Ristiina. UNESCO World Heritage Centre (UNESCO). Retrieved on 2007-01-23.
According to archaeological evidence, the area now composing Finland was first settled around 8500 BCE during the Stone Age as the ice shield of the last ice age receded. The earliest people were hunter-gatherers, living primarily off what the tundra and sea could offer. Pottery is known from around 5300 BCE (see Comb Ceramic Culture).The arrival of the Battle Axe culture (or Cord-Ceramic Culture) in southern coastal Finland around 3200 BCE may have coincided with the start of agriculture. However, the earliest certain records of agriculture are from the late third millennium BCE. Even with the introduction of agriculture, hunting and fishing continued to be important parts of the subsistence economy, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the country.
The Bronze Age (1500–500 BCE) and Iron Age (500 BCE–1200 CE) were characterised by extensive contacts with other cultures in the Fennoscandian and Baltic regions. There is no consensus on when Finno-Ugric languages and Indo-European languages were first spoken in the area of contemporary Finland.
The first verifiable written documents appeared in the twelfth century.[citation needed]
The sea fortress of Suomenlinna was founded by a decision of the Swedish Diet in 1747 as a defence works and naval base, to be built on the islands off Helsinki.
Sweden established its official rule of Finland in the 13th century by the crown. Swedish became the dominant language of the nobility, administration and education; Finnish was chiefly a language for the peasantry, clergy and local courts in predominantly Finnish-speaking areas. The Bishop of Turku was usually the most important person in Finland during the Catholic era.
The Middle Ages ended with the Reformation when the Finns gradually converted to Lutheranism. In the 16th century, Mikael Agricola published the first written works in Finnish. The first university in Finland, The Royal Academy of Turku, was established in 1640. In the 18th century, wars between Sweden and Russia led to occupation of Finland twice by Russian forces, known to the Finns as the Greater Wrath (1714–1721) and the Lesser Wrath (1742–1743). By this time "Finland" was the predominant term for the whole area from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Russian border.
.jpg/58px-Women in Finnish Parliament (1907).jpg)
Thirteen of the nineteen women elected to Parliament in 1907. The Finnish Parliament celebrated its Centennial in 2006–2007."Finns celebrate centenary of parliament, women\'s right to stand for election, vote", The Associated Press, International Herald Tribune, 2007-05-23. Retrieved on 2007-05-27.
On March 29, 1809, after being conquered by the armies of Alexander I of Russia in the Finnish War, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire until the end of 1917. During the Russian era, the Finnish language started to gain recognition, first probably to sever the cultural and emotional ties with Sweden and thereafter, from the 1860s onwards, as a result of a strong nationalism, known as the Fennoman movement. Milestones included the publication of what would become Finland\'s national epic, the Kalevala, in 1835; and the Finnish language achieving equal legal status with Swedish in 1892.
Despite the Finnish famine of 1866-1868, in which about 15 percent of the population died, political and economic development was rapid from the 1860s onwards.
In 1906, universal suffrage was adopted in the Grand Duchy of Finland, the second country in the world where this happened. However, the relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire soured when the Russian government made moves to restrict Finnish autonomy. For example, the universal suffrage was, in practice, virtually meaningless, since the emperor did not approve any of the laws adopted by the Finnish parliament. Desire for independence gained ground, first among radical nationalists and socialists.
On December 6, 1917, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Finland declared its independence, which was approved by Bolshevist Russia.
In 1918, the country experienced a brief but bitter Civil War that affected domestic politics for many decades afterwards. The Civil War was fought between "the Whites", who were supported by Imperial Germany, and "the Reds", supported by Bolshevist Russia. The Reds consisted mostly of propertyless rural and industrial workers who, despite universal suffrage in 1906, felt that they lacked political influence. The White forces were mostly made up of bourgeoisie and wealthy peasantry, politically to the right. Eventually, the Whites overcame the Reds. The deep social and political enmity between the Reds and Whites remained. The civil war and activist expeditions (see Heimosodat) to the Soviet Union strained eastern relations.
After a brief flirtation with monarchy, Finland became a presidential republic, with Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg elected as its first president in 1919. The Finnish–Russian border was determined by the Treaty of Tartu in 1920, largely following the historic border but granting Pechenga (Finnish: Petsamo) and its Barents Sea harbour to Finland. Finnish democracy survived the upsurge of the extreme rightist Lapua Movement and Great Depression in the early \'30s. However, legislators tended to be anti-communist and the relationship between Finland and the Soviet Union was tense.
Fokker D.XXI planes of the Finnish Air Force during World War II.
During World War II, Finland fought the Soviet Union twice: in the Winter War of 1939–40 after the Soviet Union had attacked Finland and in the Continuation War of 1941–44, following Operation Barbarossa in which Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Following German losses on the Eastern Front and the subsequent Soviet advance, Finland was forced to make peace with the Soviet Union. This was followed by the Lapland War of 1944–45, when Finland forced the Germans out of northern Finland.
Areas ceded by Finland to the Soviet Union after the Winter War in 1940 and the Continuation War in 1944. The Porkkala land lease was returned to Finland in 1956.
The treaties signed in 1947 and 1948 with the Soviet Union included Finnish obligations, restraints, and reparations as well as further Finnish territorial concessions (cf. the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940). Finland ceded most of Finnish Karelia, Salla, and Pechenga, which amounted to ten percent of its land area and twenty percent of its industrial capacity. Some 400,000 evacuees, mainly women and children, fled these areas. Establishing trade with the Western powers, such as the United Kingdom, and the reparations to the Soviet Union caused Finland to transform itself from a primarily agrarian economy to an industrialised one. Even after the reparations had been paid off, Finland continued to trade with the Soviet Union in the framework of bilateral trade.
After the Second World War, neutral Finland lay in the grey zone between the Western countries and the Soviet Union. The "YYA Treaty" (Finno-Soviet Pact of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance) gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics. This was extensively exploited by President Urho Kekkonen against his opponents. He maintained an effective monopoly on Soviet relations, which gave him a status of "only choice for president". There was also a tendency of self-censorship regarding Finno-Soviet relations. This phenomenon was given the name "Finlandisation" by the German press (fi. suomettuminen). However, Finland maintained a democratic government and a market economy unlike most other countries bordering the Soviet Union.
The post-war era was a period of rapid economic growth and increasing wealth and stability for Finland. In all, the war-ravaged agrarian country was transformed into a technologically advanced market economy with an extensive social welfare system. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the bilateral trade disappeared overnight. Finland was simultaneously hit by a severe depression originating from the Western markets and the Finnish economy itself that caused a structural change of the economy. The depression lasted from 1990 to 1993, but the economy survived and began growing at a high rate. Finland joined the European Union in 1995.
The name Finland (Suomi in Finnish) has uncertain origins but a strong candidate for a cognate is the proto-Baltic word *zeme meaning "land". According to an earlier theory the name was derived from suomaa (fen land) or suoniemi (fen cape).
The exonym Finland has resemblance with, e.g., the Scandinavian placenames Finnmark, Finnveden and hundreds of other toponyms starting with "Fin(n)" in Sweden and Norway. Some of these names are obviously derived from finnr, a Germanic word for a wanderer/finder and thus supposedly meaning nomadic "hunter-gatherers" or slash and burn agriculturists as opposed to the Germanic sedentary farmers and sea-faring traders and pirates. It is unknown how, why and when "Finnr" started to mean the people of Finland Proper in particular (from where the name spread from the 15th century onwards to mean the people of the whole country).
Among the first documents to mention "a land of the Finns" are two runestones. There is one in Söderby, Sweden, with the inscription finlont (U 582) and one in Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea, with the inscription finlandi (G 319) dating from the eleventh century.National Archives Service, Finland (in English). Retrieved on 2007-01-22.
Detailed map of Finland. See also: Atlas of Finland
Finland is a country of thousands of lakes and islands; 187,888 lakes (larger than 500 m²) and 179,584 islands to be precise.Statistics Finland. Retrieved on 2007-01-22. One of these lakes, Saimaa, is the fifth largest in Europe. The Finnish landscape is mostly flat with few hills and its highest point, the Halti at 1,324 metres, is found in the extreme north of Lapland at the border between Finland and Norway.
The landscape is covered mostly (seventy-five percent of land area) by coniferous taiga forests and fens, with little arable land. The most common type of rock is granite. It is a ubiquitous part of the scenery, visible wherever there is no soil cover. Moraine or till is the most common type of soil, covered by a thin layer of humus of biological origin. The greater part of the islands are found in southwest in the Archipelago Sea, part of the archipelago of the Åland Islands, and along the southern coast in the Gulf of Finland.
Finland is one of the few countries in the world whose surface area is still growing. Owing to the post-glacial rebound that has been taking place since the last ice age, the surface area of the country is growing by about 7 square kilometres (2.7 square miles) a year.Trends in sea level variability. Finnish Institute of Marine Research (2004-08-24). Retrieved on 2007-01-22.
The distance from the most Southern point – Hanko – to the most northern point of Finland – Nuorgam – is 1,445 kilometres (898 miles) (driving distance), which would take approximately 18.5 hours to drive. This is very similar to Great Britain (Land\'s End to John o\' Groats – 1,404 kilometres (872 miles) and 16.5 h).
All terrestrial life in Finland was completely wiped out during the last ice age that ended some 10,000 years ago, following the retreat of the glaciers and the appearance of vegetation.
Today, there are over 1,200 species of vascular plant, 800 bryophytes and 1,000 lichen species in Finland, with flora being richest in the southern parts of the country. Plant life, like most of the Finnish ecology, is well adapted to tolerate the contrasting seasons and extreme weather. Many plant species, such as the Scots Pine, spruce, birch spread throughout Finland from Norway and only reached the western coast less than three millennia ago. Oak and maple grows in nature only in the southern part of Finland.
The Archipelago Sea, between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland, is the largest archipelago in the world by number of islands; estimates vary between 20,000 and 50,000.
Similarly, Finland has a diverse and extensive range of fauna. There are at least sixty native mammalian species, 248 breeding bird species, over seventy fish species and eleven reptile and frog species present today, many migrating from neighbouring countries thousands of years ago.Large and widely recognised wildlife mammals found in Finland are the Brown Bear (the national animal), Gray Wolf, elk and reindeer. Other common mammals include the Red Fox, Red Squirrel, and Mountain Hare. Some rare and exotic species include the flying squirrel, Golden Eagle, Saimaa Ringed Seal and the Arctic fox, which is considered the most endangered. The Whooper Swan, the national bird of Finland, is a large Northern Hemisphere swan. The most common breeding birds are the Willow Warbler, Chaffinch and Redwing.BirdLife Finland. BirdLife International (2004) Birds in Europe: population estimates, trends and conservation status. Cambridge, UK. (BirdLife Conservation Series No. 12). Retrieved on 2007-01-22. Of some seventy species of freshwater fish, the northern pike, perch and others are plentiful. Salmon remains the favorite of fly rod enthusiasts.
The endangered Saimaa Ringed Seal, one of only three lake seal species in the world, exists only in the Saimaa lake system of southeastern Finland, down to only 300 seals today. It has become the emblem of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation.Saimaa ringed seal. Virtual Finland (Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland). Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
Due to hunting and persecution in history, many animals such as the Golden Eagle, Brown Bear and Eurasian Lynx all experienced significant declines in population. However, their numbers have increased again in the 2000s, mainly as a result of careful conservation and the establishment of vast national parks.
The climate in Southern Finland is a northern temperate climate. In Northern Finland, particularly in the Province of Lapland, a subarctic climate dominates, characterised by cold, occasionally severe, winters and relatively warm summers. The main factor influencing Finland\'s climate is the country\'s geographical position between the 60th and 70th northern parallels in the Eurasian continent\'s coastal zone, which shows characteristics of both a maritime and a continental climate, depending on the direction of air flow. Finland is near enough to the Atlantic Ocean to be continuously warmed by the Gulf Stream, which explains the unusually warm climate considering the absolute latitude.
A quarter of Finland\'s territory lies above the Arctic Circle, and as a consequence the midnight sun can be experienced – for more days, the farther north one travels. At Finland\'s northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 consecutive days during summer, and does not rise at all for 51 days during winter.
.png/58px-Map of Finland with provinces (numbered).png)
Provinces of Finland
The state organisation is divided into six administrative provinces (lääni, pl. läänit). Police, prosecutors, and other state services operate under the administration of the province, and are divided into smaller districts (formerly state local districts).
The provincial authority is part of the executive branch of the national government, and has no elected officials. This system was created in 1634, and underwent few major changes until the redivision of the country into "greater provinces" in 1997. Since then, the six provinces have been (see picture on the right):
Dialects, folklore, customs, and people\'s feeling of affiliation are associated with the historical provinces of Finland, although the re-settlement of 420,000 Karelians during World War II and urbanisation in the latter half of the twentieth century have made differences less pronounced. The present-day regions are subdivisions of these provinces.
The Åland Islands enjoy a degree of autonomy.
Municipalities and regions map of Finland (2007).
Black borders refer to municipalities, red to regions.
Legally, Finland has two levels of democratic government: the state, and 415 municipalities (as of 2008). Since 1977, no legal or administrative distinction is made between towns, cities and other municipalities. Although a municipality must follow the laws set by the state, it makes independent decisions. That is, the decisions of a municipal council, if legal, cannot be appealed. People often identify with their municipality.
Municipalities co-operate in seventy-four sub-regions and twenty regions. These are governed by the member municipalities. The Åland region has a permanent, democratically elected regional council, as a part of the autonomy. In the Kainuu region, there is a pilot project underway, with regional elections.
Sami people have a semi-autonomous Sami Domicile Area in Lapland for issues on language and culture.
In the following chart, the number of inhabitants includes those living in the entire municipality (kunta/kommun), not just in the built-up area. The land area is given in km², and the density in inhabitants per km² (land area). The figures are as of January 1, 2007. Notice that the capital region – comprising Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo and Kauniainen (see Greater Helsinki) – forms a continuous conurbation of one million people. However, common administration is limited to voluntary cooperation of all municipalities, e.g. in Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council.
| Municipality | Population | Land area | Density | Helsinki | 564,474 | 184.47 | 3,061.00 | Espoo | 235,100 | 312.00 | 751.60 | Tampere | 206,171 | 523.40 | 393.90 | Vantaa | 189,442 | 240.54 | 780.40 | Turku | 177,502 | 243.40 | 720.50 | Oulu | 130,049 | 369.43 | 351.40 | Lahti | 98,773 | 134.95 | 730.10 | Kuopio | 91,026 | 1,127.40 | 81.00 | Jyväskylä | 84,482 | 105.90 | 789.00 | Pori | 76,211 | 503.17 | 150.83 | Lappeenranta | 59,077 | 758.00 | 77.70 | Rovaniemi | 58,100 | 7,600.73 | 7.60 | Joensuu | 57,879 | 1,173.40 | 49.10 | Vaasa | 57,266 | 183.00 | 311.20 | Kotka | 54,860 | 270.74 | 203.00 |
|---|
| Population of Finland, 1750–2000Aunesluoma, Juhana; Heikkonen, Esko; Ojakoski, Matti (2006). Lukiolaisen yhteiskuntatieto (in Finnish). WSOY. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Population | Year | Population |
| 1750 | 421,000 | 1880 | 2,060,800 |
| 1760 | 491,000 | 1890 | 2,380,100 |
| 1770 | 561,000 | 1900 | 2,655,900 |
| 1780 | 663,000 | 1910 | 2,943,400 |
| 1790 | 705,600 | 1920 | 3,147,600 |
| 1800 | 832,700 | 1930 | 3,462,700 |
| 1810 | 863,300 | 1940 | 3,695,617 |
| 1820 | 1,177,500 | 1950 | 4,029,803 |
| 1830 | 1,372,100 | 1960 | 4,446,222 |
| 1840 | 1,445,600 | 1970 | 4,598,336 |
| 1850 | 1,636,900 | 1980 | 4,787,778 |
| 1860 | 1,746,700 | 1990 | 4,998,478 |
| 1870 | 1,768,800 | 2000 | 5,181,000 |
Finland currently numbers 5,290,158 inhabitants and has an average population density of 17 inhabitants per square kilometre. This makes it, after Norway and Iceland, the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Finland\'s population has always been concentrated in the southern parts of the country, which is even more pronounced after twentieth-century urbanisation. The biggest and most important cities in Finland are the cities of the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area - Helsinki, Vantaa, Espoo and Kauniainen - some of the other big cities include Tampere, Turku and Oulu.
The share of immigrants in Finland is among the lowest of the European Union countries. Foreign citizens comprise 2.3 percent of the population.Population (Foreigners in Finland). Statistics Finland. Retrieved on 2007-06-11. Most of them are from Russia, Estonia and Sweden.
Most of the Finnish people (92 percentPopulation. Statistics Finland. Retrieved on 2007-05-07.) speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Finnish is a member of the Baltic-Finnic subgroup of the Uralic languages and is typologically between inflected and agglutinative languages. It modifies and inflects the forms of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence. In practice, this means that instead of prepositions and prefixes there is a great variety of different suffixes and that compounds form a considerable percentage of the vocabulary of Finnish. It has been estimated that approximately 65–70 percent of all words in Finnish are compounds.Mikkola, Anne-Maria; Koskela, Lasse; Haapamäki-Niemi, Heljä; Julin, Anita; Kauppinen, Anneli; Nuolijärvi, Pirkko; Valkonen, Kaija (2004). Äidinkieli ja kirjallisuus – käsikirja, 1st Edition (in Finnish), WSOY, 90 pages. ISBN 951-0-26300-1. A close linguistic relative to the Finnish language is Estonian, which, though similar in many aspects, is not mutually intelligible with it. These languages, together with Hungarian (all members of the Uralic language family), are the primary non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. Finland, together with Estonia and Hungary, is one of the three independent countries where an Uralic language is spoken by the majority.
The largest minority language is Swedish, which is the second official language in Finland, spoken by 5.5 percent of the population.Väestötilastot. Väestö. Retrieved on 2007-05-07. Other minority languages are Russian (0.8 percentVäestötilastot. Väestö. Retrieved on 2007-05-07.) and Estonian (0.3 percentVäestötilastot. Väestö. Retrieved on 2007-05-07.). To the north, in Lapland, are also the Sami people, numbering around 7,000According to the Finnish Population Registry Center and the Finnish Sami parliament, the Sami population living in Finland was 7,371 in 2003. See Regional division of Sami people in Finland by age in 2003 (in Finnish). and recognized as an indigenous people. About a quarter of them speaks a Sami language as their mother tongue. There are three Sami languages that are spoken in Finland: Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami.Unofficial names for Finland in Sami languages are: Suopma (Northern Sami), Suomâ (Inari Sami) and Lää´ddjânnam (Skolt Sami). See [1]. Other minority languages are Finnish Romani, Finnish Sign Language (spoken natively by 4,000–5,000 peopleForskningscentralen för de inhemska språken :: Teckenspråk) and Finland-Swedish Sign Language (spoken natively by about 150 people). The rights of minority groups (in particular Sami, Swedish-speaking Finns and Romani people) to cherish their culture and language is protected by the constitution.The Constitution of Finland, 17 § and 121 §. FINLEX Data Bank. Retrieved on 2007-09-04. The majority of Finns learn enough English in school and from media to be proficient in that language. Other common secondary languages are Swedish, German and French.
The Helsinki Cathedral with the statue of Emperor Alexander II of Russia.
Most Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (82.5 percent).(Finnish) Kirkon väestötilastot tarkentuneet – Suomalaisista 82,4 prosenttia kuuluu luterilaiseen kirkkoon. Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (2007-02-19). Retrieved on 2007-02-19. A minority belongs to the Finnish Orthodox Church (1.1 percent) (see Eastern Orthodox Church). Other Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church in Finland are significantly smaller, as are the Muslim, Jewish and other non-Christian communities (totaling 1.2 percent). 15.1 percentFinland in Figures. Statistics Finland. Retrieved on 2007-01-22. of the population is unaffiliated. The main Lutheran and Orthodox churches are the national churches of Finland. Church attendance is much lower than these figures may suggest. Most of the population holds generally secular views. A majority of members of the state Lutheran Church do not participate actively, often attending church only for special occasions like weddings and funerals.International Religious Freedom Report 2004. U.S. Department of State (2004-09-15). Retrieved on 2007-01-22.
According to a 2005 Eurobarometer Poll,Eurobarometer on Social Values, Science and technology 2005 - page 11. Retrieved on 2007-05-05. 41 percent of Finnish citizens responded that "they believe there is a god", whereas 41 percent answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 16 percent that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force".
Finnish family life is centered on the nuclear family. Relations with the extended family are often rather distant, and Finnish people do not form politically significant clans, tribes or similar structures. According to UNICEF, Finland ranks fourth in child well-being.Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child weill-being in rich countries (PDF). UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. Retrieved on 2007-02-14.
Auditorium in the Helsinki University of Technology\'s main building, designed by Alvar Aalto.
The Finnish education system is a comparatively egalitarian Nordic system, with no tuition fees for full-time students. Attendance is compulsory between the ages of 7 and 16, and free meals are served to pupils at primary and secondary levels. The first nine years of education (primary and secondary school) are compulsory, and the pupils go to their local school. Secondary education is not compulsory; it is either a trade school, or preparation for tertiary education. In tertiary education, two, mostly separate and non-interoperating sectors are found: the higher vocational schools and universities.
In the OECD\'s international assessment of student performance, PISA, Finland has consistently been among the highest scorers worldwide; in 2003, Finnish 15-year-olds came first in reading literacy, science, and mathematics; and second in problem solving, worldwide. The World Economic Forum ranks Finland\'s tertiary education #1 in the world.The Global Competitiveness Report 2006–2007: Country Highlights. World Economic Forum. Retrieved on 2007-01-22.
Finland has a developed public health care system. 18.9 percent of health care is funded by households themselves, 76.6 percent is publicly funded, and the rest of the funding comes from elsewhere. There are 307 residents for each doctor.Health (2004). Statistics Finland. Retrieved on 2007-01-22.
After having one of the highest death rates from heart disease in the world in the 1970s, improvements in the Finnish diet and exercise have paid off. Finland also boasts the lowest smoking rate of any country in the European Union. Finland is now one of the fittest countries in the world.Fat to fit: how Finland did it. Guardian Unlimited (2005-01-15). Retrieved on 2007-01-22.
The life expectancy is 82 years for women and 75 years for men.
.JPG/58px-Eduskuntatalo (Finnish Parliament building).JPG)
Eduskuntatalo, the main building of the Parliament of Finland (Eduskunta) in Helsinki.
Finland has a semi-presidential system with parliamentarism. The president is responsible for foreign policy outside of the European Union in cooperation with the cabinet (the Finnish Council of State) where most executive power lies, headed by the Prime Minister. Responsibility for forming the cabinet is granted to a person nominated by the President and a
