FINLAND

Mainland Scandinavia's most culturally isolated and least understood country, Finland has been independent only since 1917, having been ruled for hundreds of years by imperial powers: first the Swedes and then the tsarist Russians. Much of its history involves a struggle simply for recognition and survival.

Today, though, the battle has been won and the Finns are the proudest of all the Nordic nations, trumpeting the fact that this little known country on the very edge of Europe is truly one of the continent's best kept secrets. Finland is without a doubt the most welcoming of all of the Scandinavian countries; Finns of all ages are inordinately proud of their nation's achievements (it is, after all, only by a quirk of history that Finland was not invaded by the Soviet Union and well and truly taken in to Moscow's sphere of influence) and are anxious that visitors learn more about their country, where a joy in all things Finnish goes hand in hand with eager participation in the European Union. Forget any lingering perceptions that Finland is mundane, grey or even Communist – today it's a welcoming, honest and prosperous society keen to make up for years of living on the sidelines. During the Swedish period, the Finnish language (one of Europe's least familiar and most difficult) was regarded as fit only for peasants – which the majority of Finns were – and attempts were later made to forcibly impose Russian. All publications were in Swedish until the Kalevala appeared in the early nineteenth century.

A written collection of previously orally transmitted folk tales telling of a people close to nature, living by hunting and fishing, the Kalevala instantly became regarded as a truly Finnish history, and formed the basis of the National Romantic movement in the arts that flourished from the mid-nineteenth century, stimulating political initiatives towards Finnish nationalism. It's not surprising, therefore, that modern-day Finns have a well-developed sense of their own culture, and that the legacy of the past is strongly felt – in the still widely popular Golden Age paintings of Gallen-Kallela, Edelfelt and others; the music of Sibelius; and the National Romantic architecture which paved the way for modern greats like Alvar Aalto.

Equally in evidence, even among city dwellers, are the deeply ingrained, down-to-earth values of rural life, along with a sense of spirituality epitomized by the sauna, which for Finns is a meaningful ritual rather than an exercise in health. Some elderly rural dwellers are prone to suspicion of anything foreign, but in general the Finnish population is much less staid than its Nordic neighbours, and the disintegration of its once powerful neighbour, the Soviet Union, has allowed it to form closer ties with Europe through membership of the European Union. By the end of the 1990s Finland's economy was buoyant enough to allow it to join the first wave of countries in the European Monetary Union. It's currently the only one of the three Nordic EU members to have introduced the euro, and with the success of Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia and a flourishing IT sector, the country reached the millennium with renewed confidence and self-belief. However, unemployment is still high in some places, particularly in rural areas, and some sections of the country's society are being left behind in Finland's drive to become a technological world leader.

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