World Country Finland

About the world country Finland, its location, size, population, and who is in power.

NATIONS OF THE WORLD

FINLAND

Location: In northern Europe, between the Gulf of Bothnia (Baltic Sea) and Karelia (U.S.S.R.). Size: 130,119 sq. mi. (337,009 sq. km.).

Population: 4,786,000.

Who Really Rules: Finland is a multiparty democracy governed by a center-left coalition. The aging president, Urho Kekkonen, is a popular leader, largely because of his ability to maintain Finland's independence while preserving its friendship with the Soviet Union, with which it shares a 1,000-mi. frontier. Finland has a free market economy, but a number of enterprises are state or cooperatively owned, and there is a broad range of social welfare programs.

The reindeer-raising Lapp minority, with 50,000 people in northern Finland, Scandinavia, and the Soviet Kola Peninsula, is losing its culture through exposure to industrial cultures from the south. Finland has created a special Lapp parliament and offers schooling in native languages to slow this trend.