Portal:Finland
Welcome to the Finnish Portal!
Tervetuloa Suomen teemasivulle!
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The Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomen tasavalta Swedish: Republiken Finland) is a Nordic country in northeastern Europe, bordered by the Baltic Sea to the southwest, the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west. Finland has land frontiers with Sweden, Norway and Russia. The Åland Islands, off the southwestern coast, are under Finnish sovereignty while enjoying extensive autonomy. The Finnish name for Finland is Suomi; in Swedish it is Finland.
Finland gained independence from Russia on 6 December 1917. Prior to that, it had been part of the Kingdom of Sweden and an autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland under Imperial Russia. After fighting two wars with the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century, it has grown quickly from a largely agrarian society to one of the world's most developed countries. Finland has a high standard of living, one of the best educational systems in the world, and it has been the birthplace to many technological phenomena such as Nokia, SMS, Linux, Angry Birds and IRC.
Finland has been a member of the European Union since 1995.
Selected article
The Kauhajoki school shooting was a school shooting that occurred on 23 September 2008, at Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, a city in Western Finland. The gunman, 22-year-old culinary arts student Matti Juhani Saari, shot and fatally injured ten people with a semi-automatic pistol, before shooting himself in the head. He died a few hours later in Tampere University Hospital. One woman was injured but was in a stable condition.
The shooting took place at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, owned by the Seinäjoki Municipal Federation of Education. The facilities and campus were shared between the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences and the Seinäjoki Vocational Education Centre - Sedu. Saari was a second-year student in a Bachelor of Hospitality Management degree programme.
The incident was the second school shooting in less than a year in Finland, the other being the Jokela school shooting in November 2007, in which nine people including the gunman were killed. Before that, only one other school shooting had taken place in the country's history, in Rauma in 1989, leaving two people dead.
Selected picture
Photo credit: commons:User:Joonasl
Sun setting over Lake Päijänne at Sysmä, Finland. On the right is Päijätsalo island which is part of the Päijätsalo nature park.
Did you know...
- ...that the career of Tiia Piili, four-time FISAF World Champion in sport aerobics, was threatened when she got food poisoning attending a competition in Morocco?
- ...that Erkki Karu founded both Suomi-Filmi and Suomen Filmiteollisuus, the two largest film production companies during the 'Golden Age' of Finnish cinema?
- ...that "Blooddrunk", a track by Finnish band Children of Bodom about self-destructive behaviour, debuted at number one in Finland?
- ...that Taisto Mäki, one of the so-called Flying Finns, was the first man to run 10,000 metres in under half an hour?
- ...that when called by the opposition to quit after the Kauhajoki school shooting, Finnish politician Anne Holmlund refused and compared resigning her post as Interior Minister to "desertion"?
- ... that the asteroid 1536 Pielinen is named after Pielinen Lake (pictured) in Finland?}}
Selected biography
Thomas is the first known Bishop of Finland. Only a few facts remain about his life.
The only reference to Bishop Thomas during his episcopate in Finland is a letter signed by him in Nousiainen in 1234, which granted certain lands around the parish to his chaplain, Wilhelm. The lands may be related to the papal permission from Pope Gregory IX in early 1229 that authorized the church to take over all non-Christian places of worship in Finland. The letter is the first surviving letter ever written in Finland.
No further information on bishop's activities has survived before he was granted resignation by Pope Innocent IV on February 21, 1245. According to the Pope, Thomas had admitted committing several felonies, like torturing a man to death and forging a papal letter. Church representatives to oversee the resignation were the Archbishop of Uppsala and the Dominican prior of the Dacian province. Thomas donated his books to the newly established Dominican convent in Sigtuna and went on to live his last years in the Dominican convent in Visby, Gotland. He died there in 1248, shortly before the Second Swedish Crusade which cemented the Swedish rule in Finland for more than 550 years.
Finland News
- December 31: Helsinki court jails anti-drug chief Jari Aarnio for drug smuggling
- December 4: Gunman kills official, two journalists in Imatra, Finland
- October 5: World Wildlife Fund: 75% of seafood species consumed in Singapore not caught sustainably
- September 1: Biologist Nick Bos tells Wikinews about 'self-medicating' ants
- November 28: Finland passes law allowing same-sex marriage
- June 29: Medal-seeking Spanish men arrive at 2014 Goalball World Championships
- June 26: Belgian men's goalball team departs for Finland for World Championships
- March 10: Wheelchair curling enters third day at 2014 Winter Paralympics
- October 9: Japanese adults rank high in literacy and numeracy in OECD survey
- September 29: Finnish female politicians highlighted by World Bank's 2012 gender report
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Wikiprojects
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Selected panorama
Panoramic photo shot from the water tower in Hanko, Finland.
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