Geography

Bordering the Baltic Sea, Gulf of Bothnia, and Gulf of Finland, between Sweden and Russia, Finland is the northernmost country on the European continent. Although other countries have points extending farther north, virtually all of Finland is north of 60 degrees north latitude; nearly a quarter of the land area and fully one-third of the latitudinal extent of the country lie north of the Arctic Circle.

Finland's total area is 338,145 sq km (130,558 sq miles). It is the seventh largest country in Europe after Russia, Ukraine, France, Spain, Sweden and Germany. Of this area 10% is water, 69% forest, 8% cultivated land and 13% other.

Geology and Topography

Finland is a country of thousands of lakes and islands; 187,888 lakes (larger than 500 sq m) and 179,584 islands to be precise. One of these lakes, Saimaa, is the 5th largest in Europe. The Finnish landscape is mostly flat with few hills and its highest point, the Halti at 1,328 metres, is found in the extreme north of Lapland at the border between Finland and Norway. Landscape is covered mostly (75% of land area) by coniferous taiga forests, fens, and little arable land. 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.

The most predominant influences on Finland's geography were the continental glaciers that scoured and gouged the country's surface. When the glaciers receded about 10,000 years ago, they left behind them moraines, drumlins and eskers. Other indications of their presence are the thousands of lakes they helped to form in the southern part of the country. The force of the moving ice sheets gouged the lake beds, and meltwaters helped to fill them. The recession of the glaciers is so recent (in geologic terms) that modern-day drainage patterns are immature and poorly established. The direction of glacial advance and recession set the alignment of the lakes and streams in a general northeast to southwest lineation. The two Salpausselkä Ridges, which run parallel to each other about twenty-five kilometres apart, are the terminal moraines. At their greatest height they reach an elevation of about 200 metres, the highest point in southern Finland.

The most common type of rock in Finland 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.

Landform Regions

Many countries of the world can be divided into distinct geographic regions, in each of which some physical characteristic is dominant, almost to the exclusion of others. In Finland, the same physical characteristics are common to each of the four geographic regions into which the country is divided. Regional differences in Finland lie, therefore, in subtle combinations of physical qualities. In archipelago Finland, rock and water are dominant. Coastal Finland consists of broad clay plains where agriculture plays a leading role. The interior Finnish lake district supports extensive forests. Upland Finland is covered by Arctic scrub.

Archipelago Finland

Archipelago Finland, consisting of thousands of islands and skerries, extends from the southwestern coast out into the Baltic Sea. It includes the strategically significant Åland Islands, positioned at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia. After World War I, both Finland and Sweden laid claim to the islands, which are culturally more Swedish than Finnish. For strategic reasons, however, the League of Nations awarded the Åland Islands to Finland in 1921 . A principal reason for this decision was that, during the winter, the islands are physically linked to Finland by the frozen waters of the sea and are thus essential for the country's defence. These forest-covered and bare bedrock islands were, and continue to be, formed by the process of uplift following the last glaciation.

The rest of the country is also still emerging from the sea. The weight of the continental glaciers depressed the land over which they moved, and even now, a hundred centuries after their recession, Finland is rising up from this great load through the process of isostatic rebound. In the south and the southwest, this process is occurring slowly, at a rate of 25-30 cm a century. Farther north in the Ostrobothnia area, uplift is more rapid, it amounts to 80-90 cm a century. The process also means that Finland is growing about 7 sq km yearly as land emerges from the sea.

Coastal Finland

Coastal Finland consists of broad clay plains extending from the coast inland, for no more than 100 kilometres. These plains slope southward from the morainic Salpausselkä Ridges in southern Finland. Along the Gulf of Bothnia coast, the plains slope southwest from upland areas. The land of coastal Finland is used for agriculture and dairy farming.

Interior Lake District

The interior lake district is the largest geographic region, and it is perhaps what most foreigners think of when they imagine Finland. The district is bounded to the south by the Salpausselkä Ridges. Behind the ridges extend networks of thousands of lakes separated by hilly forested countryside. This landscape continues to the east and extends into Russia. As a consequence, there is no natural border between the two countries.

Because no set definition of what constitutes a lake and no procedures for counting the number of lakes exist, it has been impossible to ascertain exactly how many lakes the region has. There are, however, at least 55,000 lakes that are 200 or more metres wide. The largest is Lake Saimaa, which, with a surface area of more than 4,400 square kilometres, is the fifth largest lake in Europe. The deepest lake has a depth of only 100 metres; the depth of the average lake is 7 metres. Because they are shallow, these many lakes contain only slightly more water than Finland's annual rainfall. The hilly, forest-covered landscape of the lake plateau is dominated by drumlins and by long sinuous eskers, both glacial remnants.

Upland Finland

Upland Finland extends beyond the Arctic Circle. The extreme north of this region is known as Lapland. The highest points in upland Finland reach an elevation of about 1,000 metres, and they are found in the Kilpisjärvi area of the Scandinavian Keel Ridge. In the southern upland region the hills are undulating, while in the north they are rugged. Much of upland Finland is not mountainous, but consists of bogs.

Finland's longest and most impressive rivers are in the north. The Kemijoki has the largest network of tributaries. Farther south the Oulujoki drains the beginning of the north country. Most of the streams flow to the Gulf of Bothnia, but there is a broad stretch of land in the north and northeast that is drained by rivers flowing north across Norway and northeast across Russia to the Arctic Ocean.