The Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomi, Suomen tasavalta, Swedish: Republiken Finland (help·info)), is one of the Nordic countries. Situated in Northern Europe, it shares land borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east and Norway to the north while Estonia lies to its south. Finland is bounded by the Baltic Sea with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west. The Åland Islands, off the south-western coast, are an autonomous province of Finland.

Finland has a population of over five million people spread over more than 330,000 km² (127,000 sq. mi) making it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world).

Finland is ranked thirteenth on the 2005 United Nations Human Development Index.

Along with Estonian, Hungarian and Maltese, Finnish is one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin.