But the winters are freezing and start in December and can last until May, with hour sunless nights. The northern lights , or aurora borealis, can be seen in the Lapland region of Finland regularly in the fall, winter, and spring.
Nearly 30 percent of the region is protected by the government, and the barren landscape is occupied mostly by reindeer and the Sami people.
Brown bears , elk, gray wolves , wolverines , and lynx the only wild cat species in the country all roam the woods. Ducks and other waterfowl live in the thousands of lakes scattered throughout the country.
The endangered Saimaa ringed seal, one of just three lake seal species in the world, is found only in the Saimaa lake system of southeastern Finland.
Finland is a parliamentary republic. The president appoints a prime minister to lead the cabinet, which is the executive branch. The prime minister is the head of the government, but the president is the head of the armed forces.
In , Finland made history when both their president and prime minister were women, the first time that had happened in Europe. Finland had been one of the best-performing economies in Europe before , but recently an aging population has slowed down the exchange of goods and money in the country.
Currently over 75 percent of the labor force works in the service industry, such as in hotels and restaurants. The first inhabitants of present-day Finland arrived about 9, years ago. For much of the Viking era A. During this time, the Finns supplied furs to Vikings, who passed through the country on their way to Russia.
When the Viking era ended in the 11th century, both the Russians and the Swedes tried to claim Finland. The conflict between Russia and Sweden evolved into a religious rivalry, resulting in the pope—the head of the Catholic Church—declaring Finland a Swedish territory in Information about Vantaa.
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However, some historians believe its origins are actually Swedish, where the words finlonti and finlandi are believed to have been used as early as the 12th Century to describe the land that is now the south-western part of modern Finland.
I began my quest at the National Museum of Finland. From to Finland was a Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire; before that, the territory was under Swedish control for almost years. Between these two northern powers, the land that Finland now occupies was fought over repeatedly; occupied and re-occupied from both sides. The Russian Revolution paved the way for the Finns to declare their independence.
A third theory led me to Finnish Lapland in search of the Sami, a traditionally nomadic tribe of reindeer herders. In winter, Lapland looks like a scene out of a storybook. Like a giant over-chilled freezer, everything was covered in powdery snow, frozen and shaped by the extreme arctic wind.
It was surrounded by this captivating scenery that I met with sixth-generation reindeer herder Juha Kujala and his year-old son Oskari at their family farm near Ruka, more than km north of Helsinki.
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