ABSTRACT
Finland is highly industrialized, technologically advanced, and sparsely inhabited, with a population of 5.3 million in an area of 338,000 square kilometers or about the size of Germany. Officially, Finland is a bilingual country with a Swedish-speaking minority of 5.4%. In Lapland, a province in the north of Finland, there is a constitutionally protected minority of 7,000 Sámi people, of whom 1,600 speak Sámi. In addition, some people (156,000) speak other languages as their mothertongues (Finland in Figures 2010).
