Finland (Finnish: Suomi, Swedish: Finland) is located in Northern Europe and has borders with Russia to the east, Norway to the north, and Sweden to the west.
The country is thoroughly modern with well-planned and comfortable small towns and cities, but still offers vast areas of unspoiled nature. Finland has approximately 188,000 lakes (about 10% of the country) and a similar number of islands. In the northernmost part of the country the Northern Lights can be seen in the winter and midnight sun in the summer.
Finns also claim the mythical mountain of Korvatunturi as the home of Santa Claus, and a burgeoning tourist industry in Lapland caters to Santa fans. Despite living in one of the most technologically developed countries in the world, the Finns love to head to their summer cottages in the warmer months to enjoy all manner of relaxing pastimes including sauna, swimming, fishing and barbecuing.
Study in Finland and experience this peaceful and magical country for yourself.
Languages Spoken in Finland
Finland is officially bilingual in Finnish and Swedish, but in practice Finland is largely (93%) monolingual in Finnish. Finnish is not related to the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese), Russian, or English. In fact, is not even an Indo-European language, instead belonging in the Uralic group of languages which includes Hungarian and Estonian, making it hard for speakers of most other European languages to learn. Reading signboards can also be difficult as Finnish has relatively few loan words from common European languages, and as a result it is very hard to guess what words in Finnish mean.
Swedish is the mother tongue for 5.6% of the Finns, and in continental Finland the Swedish-speaking communities are mainly in smaller rural municipalities and along the Southwest coast. There are no large cities with a Swedish majority. Many towns and road signs on the coast use alternate Finnish and Swedish names, so road signs can be confusing.
The small autonomous province of Åland is exclusively Swedish-speaking. Because Swedish is mandatory subject in schools, everyone is supposed to speak and understand it. In reality, this is not the case unless you are travelling in areas with a significant Swedish speaking population. Workers in hotels and restaurants are usually required to be capable of communicating in Swedish and there is almost always at least one person who knows how to speak German so don’t be afraid to ask!
Most Finns also speak some English. In larger cities, nearly all people you could possibly meet as a tourist speak English very well, and with the younger people even in the rural locations. Note that Finns might be shy to speak English, even though they might understand it quite well. Besides English, a significant proportion of Finns can speak German or French, other secondary languages (Spanish, Russian) being rare.
TV programs and movies are nearly always subtitled. Only children’s programmes and movies get dubbed into Finnish.
Popular Places to Study
- Helsinki
Activities and Freetime
- Archipelagos, especially along the southwestern coast
- National parks
- Ski resorts
- Levi
- Saariselkä
- Ylläs