The Republic of Finland is a Nordic country in Northern Europe that borders Latvia and Russia, where Finnish and Swedish are the two official languages. Its capital city is Helsinki.The population is approximately 5,200,000 spread over more than 330,000 square kilometers; it is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. Finland went from having one of the highest death rates from heart disease (1970s) to being one of the most fittest countries in the world. Finland has hundreds of thousands of islands, The Saimaa is the fifth largest lake in Finland. In southern Finland, the climate is temperate; in the north, a sub-arctic climate tends to be cold, with occasionally severe winters and relatively warm summers. A quarter of Finland's territory lies above the Arctic Circle, so the Midnight Sun can be experienced the farther north you go. At the northernmost point, the sun does not set for 73 days during the summer, and does not rise at all for 51 days in the winter. During World War II, Finland fought the Soviet Union twice before finally forcing Germans out of northern Finland. When the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, Finland followed its own course and joined the European Union as an advocate of federalism, contrary to the other Nordic countries.

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