About Finland

     Finland, or the Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info)), is a Nordic country situated in Northern Europe. It has borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east, and Norway to the north, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland. The capital city is Helsinki.

     Finland has a population of 5,238,460 people, spread over an area of 338,145 square kilometres (130,559 square miles). The majority of the population is concentrated in the southern part of the country. Finland is the sixth largest country in Europe in terms of area, with a low population density of 15.5 persons per square kilometre, making it the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. As their mother tongue, most Finns speak Finnish, one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin. The second official language, Swedish, is spoken natively by a 5.5 percent minority.

     Previously part of Sweden and from 1809 an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire, Finland declared its independence in 1917. Today, Finland is a democratic, parliamentary republic and has been a member state of the United Nations since 1955 and the European Union since 1995. Finland has thriving services and manufacturing sectors and is a highly democratic welfare state with low levels of corruption, consistently ranking at or near the top in international comparisons of national performance.

    Finland is eleventh on the United Nations' Human Development Index and ranked as the sixth happiest nation in the world. According to the World Audit Democracy profile, Finland is the freest nation in the world in terms of civil liberties, freedom of the press, low corruption levels and political rights. Finland is rated the sixth most peaceful country in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit and since 1945, Finland has been at peace, adopting neutrality in wartime.

     Finland was rated the best country to live in by Reader's Digest study released in October 2007, which looked at issues such as quality of drinking water and greenhouse gas emissions as well as factors such as education and income.

About Kokkola

     Kokkola, or Karleby in Swedish, is a town and municipality of Finland. The town is located in the province of Western Finland and is part of the Central Ostrobothnia region. The municipality has a population of 36 516 (2007) and covers an area of 332.44 km² of which 4.92 km² is water. The population density is 107.6 inhabitants per km². The municipality is bilingual with 81.0% being Finnish and 17.9% Swedish speakers.

     The town of Kokkola was chartered in 1620 by king Gustav II Adolf of Sweden (Finland at that time being a part of Sweden). Kokkola was founded as a shipping port for the tar trade. It also became an important shipbuilding centre in Finland. As a result of tar trade and shipbuilding industry Kokkola was for a time the richest town in Finland.

     An interesting historical affair occurred at the town of Kokkola in May 1854 during the Crimean War. British marines from HMS Vulture and HMS Odin tried to come ashore to ransack the town, but were repelled by local defenders, of which many were civilians armed with hunting rifles. One of the 9 smaller British craft (a gunboat) fell into the hands of the defenders. As such, this boat was the only Royal Navy vessel still in foreign possession in 1914. The boat is still today a museum-object and can be seen in Kokkola. The town council has refused to return the boat despite several requests by the United Kingdom, most recently by John Stuttard, the Lord Mayor of London. The British Treasury annually pay a small sum for the maintenance of nine graves of nine marines killed in action during the skirmish to the local church congregation. 

     The city had a Swedish-speaking majority until 1933.

     The Finnish name Kokkola means 'The place of bonfire' or 'The place of eagle' since the Finnish word kokko has two meanings: bonfire and white-tailed eagle (the suffix '-la' denotes a location). The town was known in Swedish by the name Gamlakarleby until January 1, 1977 when the surrounding land municipality of Kaarlela (swe. Karleby) was united with Kokkola, and the town took over the Swedish name of Karleby. Gamla means 'old', Karl means 'man' or 'peasant' and by means 'village'. So it literally means Old village of peasants. The Latin name was Carolina Vetus.