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Finland numbers some five million inhabitants and has an average population density of 17 inhabitants per square kilometre. This makes it, after Norway and Iceland, the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Population distribution is very uneven, population is concentrated on small southwestern coastal plain. About 60 % live in towns and cities, with 955 thousand living in Helsinki Metropolitan Area alone. In arctic Lapland, on the other hand, there are only 2 people to every square kilometre. The earliest inhabitants of most of the land area that makes up today's Finland and Scandinavia were in all likehood hunter-gatherers whose closest successors in modern terms would probably be the Sami people (formerly known as the Lapps). There are 4,500 of them living in Finland today and they are recognised as a minority with their own language. They have been living north of the Arctic Circle for more than 7,000 years now. In the 1960's many Finns abandoned rural areas for Sweden, while most immigrants into Finland itself come from other European countries. With 84 per cent of Finns in its congregation, the Lutheran Church is the largest in the country. The official languages are Finnish and Swedish, the latter being the native language of about six per cent of the Finnish population. There is a historical explanation for the status of Swedish as an official language: from the 13th to the 19th century Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden.

Contents 1 Language distribution 2 Demographics 3 Age structure 4 Ethnic groups 5 Languages 6 Religions 7 Literacy 8 References

Finnish people speak the Finnish language, which the dominant language and is spoken everywhere in the country.

Significant populations of Swedish-speakers are found only in coastal areas, from Ostrobothnia to the southern coast, and in the archipelago of Åland. Several rural communities on the western and southern coast have Swedish majorities. Coastal cities, however, are majority Finnish-speaking, with a few small towns as exceptions. There are very few Swedish-speakers in the inland.

Generally speaking, Finnish language usage is still expanding in relative and absolute terms due to the slow but steady language switching of the Swedish-speaking population, natural population growth, and immigration. The immigrant population is growing faster than the general population, both naturally and by immigration, and immigrant minorities will become more significant in the future. Currently, the percentage of immigrants is one of the smallest in Europe.

Concerning native languages, the Finnish-speaking population has a comparatively high natural growth rate (compared to other EU countries),^{[citation needed]} while the death rate of the Swedish-speaking population is higher than its birthrate¹. It is predicted that these rates will even out in 2012 and that the absolute size of the Swedish-speaking population will remain constant² while its percentage of the total population will diminish as the total population grows. Politically, the result is that local Swedish majorities and dominance are diminishing¹. Most Swedish speakers lived in monolingually (more than 94%) Swedish areas in 1880, but the figure had dropped to 14% in 2002¹. However, 50% of Swedish speakers still live in communities in which they form the majority and exercise considerable political power.

• Population: 5,223,442 (July 2005 est.)
• Life expectancy at birth: 78.35 years (2005 est.)
  • male: 74.82 years
  • female: 82.02 years
• Total fertility rate: 1.73 children born/woman (2006 est.)

• 0-14 years: 17.3% (male 460,977; female 443,859)
• 15-64 years: 66.8% (male 1,764,874; female 1,723,385)
• 65 years and over: 15.9% (male 328,952; female 501,395) (2005 est.)

• Population growth rate: 0.16% (2005 est.)
• Birth rate: 10.5 births/1,000 population (2005 est.)
• Death rate: 9.79 deaths/1,000 population (2005 est.)
• Net migration rate: 0.89 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2005 est.)

• Finnish 97.6 % (Finnish-speakers 92 %, Swedish-speakers 5.6 %)
• Russians 0.6 %
• Roma 0.12%
• Sami 0.11%
• Finnish Tatars 0.02%
• Other 1.55%

• Finnish language 93.4 % (official)
• Swedish language 5.5 % (official)
• Russian language 0.6 %
• Sami language 0.03% (semi-official)

• Evangelical Lutheran 83.1 % (Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, state church)
• Russian Orthodox 1.2 % (Finnish Orthodox Church, second state church)
• other ca. 1.2 %
• none ca. 14.5 %

• Definition: age 15 and over can read and write
• Total population: 100% (1980 est.)

• CIA World Factbook