Finland
Finland Geography & Climate
Geography
Finland covers about 338,000 square kilometres, making it the eighth-largest country in Europe, and it is defined by two things — the ice that scraped it flat and the water that filled in behind.
Lakes and forest
There are roughly 188,000 lakes larger than five hundred square metres and about the same number of islands. Around three-quarters of the land is forest, mostly pine, spruce and birch, which is the highest proportion in Europe. The Lakeland in the south-east is a maze of interconnected water where Saimaa, the largest lake, holds a freshwater seal found nowhere else.
Flat, and still rising
Most of the country lies under two hundred metres. The only real relief is in the north-west arm, where the fells rise toward the Scandinavian mountains and Halti reaches 1,324 metres at the Norwegian border. The land is still rebounding from the weight of the last ice sheet, lifting several millimetres a year — the Gulf of Bothnia coast gains new land each decade, and the Kvarken archipelago is UNESCO-listed for exactly this.
The archipelago
Off the south-west coast, tens of thousands of islands and skerries run out to the autonomous, Swedish-speaking Aland islands.
Lapland
A third of the country lies above the Arctic Circle: open fell, bog, and the reindeer herding lands, thinly populated and bordering Sweden, Norway and Russia.
Bogs
Around a third of the land was originally peatland, much of it drained for forestry, and it remains a major part of the landscape and the carbon question.
Climate Patterns
Finland has a cold temperate climate in the south and a subarctic one in the north, kept far milder than its latitude by the Baltic and the North Atlantic Drift — comparable latitudes in Siberia or Canada are much harsher.
Winter
Snow cover lasts roughly four months in the south and up to seven in Lapland, normally from November or December to April or May. Southern temperatures run around −5°C, Lapland around −15°C with cold snaps below −30°C. It is a dry cold, which is more bearable than the numbers suggest, provided you are dressed for it in layers.
Light, and the lack of it
This is the fact that shapes a visit. Above the Arctic Circle the sun does not rise at all for weeks around midwinter — the polar night, which is a long blue twilight rather than true darkness — and does not set for weeks around midsummer. Helsinki keeps about six hours of light in December and nineteen in June.
The aurora
Visible in Lapland on perhaps two nights in three in winter when skies are clear, and occasionally as far south as Helsinki. It needs darkness and clear sky, so September to March, away from town lights.
Summer
June to August averages 19 to 23°C in the south with occasional spells near 30°C, and the lakes warm enough to swim. It is short and taken seriously.
Mosquitoes
Lapland and the bogs in June and July produce them in extraordinary numbers. Repellent and a head net are not a joke.