FINLAND, GULF OF

Finnish Suomen Lahti, Russian Finsky Zaliv, easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea, between Finland (north) and Russia and Estonia (east and south). Covering an area of 11,600 square miles (30,000 square km), the gulf extends for 250 miles (400 km) from east to west but only 12 to 80 miles (19 to 130 km) from north to south. It has a maximum depth of 377 feet (115 m) at its western end. Of low salinity (six parts per thousand), the gulf freezes over for three to five months in winter. It receives the Neva and Narva rivers and the Saimaa Canal. Included within the gulf are the islands of Gogland (Sur-sari, or Hgland), Lavansari (Moshchnyy), and Kotlin (Kronshtadt). The gulf is an important shipping route for its main ports: Porkkala, Helsinki, and Kotka in Finland; Vyborg, St. Petersburg, and Kronshtadt in Russia; and Tallinn in Estonia. History Early independence Although the liberation from Russia occurred peacefully, Finland was unable to avert a violent internal conflict. After the revolutionary Reds had won control of the Social Democratic Party, they went into action and on Jan. 28, 1918, seized Helsinki and the larger industrial towns in southern Finland. The right-wing government led by the Conservative Pehr Evind Svinhufvud fled to the western part of the country, where a counterattack was organized under the leadership of General Carl Gustaf Mannerheim. At the beginning of April the White Army under his command won the Battle of Tampere. German troops came to the aid of the White forces in securing Helsinki; by May the rebellion had been suppressed. It was followed by trials in which harsh sentences were passed. During the summer and fall of 1918 some 20,000 former revolutionaries either were executed or died in prison camps, bringing the total losses of the war to more than 30,000 lives. A few of the revolutionary leaders, however, managed to escape to Soviet Russia, where a small contingent founded the Finnish Communist Party in Moscow; others continued their flight to the United States and western Europe, some gradually returning to Finland. Political change When the Civil War ended, it was decided, during the summer of 1918, to make Finland a monarchy, and in October the German prince Frederick Charles of Hessen was chosen as king. With Germany's defeat in the war, however, General Mannerheim was designated regent, with the task of submitting a proposal for a new constitution. As it was obvious that Finland was to be a republic, the struggle now concerned presidential power. The liberal parties and the reorganized Social Democratic Party wanted power to be invested in Parliament, while the Conservatives wanted the president to have powers independent of Parliament. The strong position held by the Conservatives after the Civil War enabled them to force through their motion that the president should be chosen by popularly elected representatives, independent of Parliament, and also that he should possess a great deal more authority, especially regarding foreign policy, than at that time was usual for a head of state. After the new constitution had been confirmed on July 17, 1919, the Social Democrats positioned themselves behind the liberal National Progressive Party leader, Kaarlo Juho Sthlberg, to make him the first president of Finland and to defeat the Conservative candidate Mannerheim, who had not convinced them of his loyalty to republicanism. History Earliest peoples The first people arrived in Finland about 9,000 years ago. They probably represented several groups and tribes, including the ancestors of the present Sami. Lured by the plenitude of game, particularly fur-bearing animals and fish, they followed the melting ice northward. The first people perhaps came to hunt only for the summer, but gradually more and more of them stayed over the winter. Apparently berries played a significant role in their diet. Another group probably arrived some 3,000 years later from the southeast. They possibly spoke a Finno-Ugric language and may have been related to the ancestors of the present Finns, if they were not actually of the same group. Other peoplesincluding the ancestors of the Tavastiansfollowed from the southwest and central Europe, eventually adopting the Finno-Ugric tongue. During the 1st millennium BC several more groups arrived, among them the ancestors of the present Finns. The nomadic Sami, who had been scattered over the greater part of Finland, withdrew to the north. Most other groups intermarried and assimilated with the newcomers, and settlement spread across the south of Finland. The population was still extremely sparse, but three loose unities seem to have crystallized: the Finns proper, the Tavastians, and the Karelians. These each had their own chiefs, and they waged war on one another. Even before the beginning of the Viking Age (8th11th century AD), Swedes had settled on the southwestern coast. During the Viking Age, Finland lay along the northern boundary of the trade routes to Russia, and the inhabitants of the area served as suppliers of furs. The Finns apparently did not take part in the Viking expeditions. The end of the Viking Age was a time of unrest in Finland, and Swedish and Danish raids were made on the area, where Russians and Germans also traded. Competition for trade and converts From the 12th century, Finland became a battleground between Russia and Sweden. The economic rivalry of the powers in the Baltic was turned into a religious rivalry, and the Swedish expeditions took on the character of crusades. Finland is mentioned together with Estonia in a list of Swedish provinces drawn up for the pope in 1120, apparently as a Swedish missionary area. The first crusade, according to tradition, was undertaken in about 1157 by King Erik, who was accompanied by an English bishop named Henry. Henry remained in Finland to organize the affairs of the church and was murdered by a Finnish yeoman; by the end of the 12th century, he was revered as a saint, and he later became Finland's patron. In a papal bull (c. 1172), the Swedes were advised to force the Finns into submission by permanently manning the Finnish fortresses in order to protect the Christianization effort from attacks from the east. By the end of the 12th century, competition for influence in the Gulf of Finland had intensified: German traders had regular contacts with Novgorod via Gotland, and Denmark tried to establish bases on the gulf. The Danes reportedly invaded Finland in 1191 and again in 1202; in 1209 the pope authorized the archbishop of Lund to appoint a minister stationed in Finland. The Swedish king counterattacked, and in 1216 he received confirmation from the pope of his title to the lands won by himself and his predecessors from the heathens. He was also authorized to establish a seat for one or two bishops in the Finnish missionary territory. In eastern Finland the Russian church attempted to win converts, and in 1227 Duke Jaroslav undertook a program of forced baptisms, designed to tie Karelia closer to Novgorod. In response the pope placed Finland under apostolic protection and invoked a commercial blockade against Russia (1229). A large force, led by Birger, a Swedish jarl (a noble ranking immediately below the king), and including Swedes, Finns, and crusaders from various countries, was defeated in 1240 by a duke of Novgorod, and the advance of Western Christendom into Russia was halted, while the religious division of Finland was sealed, with the Karelians in the Eastern sphere. The bishop of Finland, Thomas, resigned in 1245, and the mission territory was left without leadership until 1249, when the Dominicans founded a monastery in Turku. The economy Finland's economy is based primarily on private ownership and free enterprise; in some sectors, however, the government exercises a monopoly or a leading role. After World War II, Finland was still only semi-industrialized, with a large part of the population engaged in agriculture, mining, and forestry. During the early postwar decades, primary production gave way to industrial development, which in turn yielded to a service- and information-oriented economy. The economy grew especially rapidly in the 1980s, as the country exploited its strong trading relations with both eastern and western European countries. By the early 1990s, however, the country was experiencing economic recession, largely because the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 deprived Finland of its chief trading partner. The economy began a slow recovery in the mid-1990s, as Finland refocused its trade primarily toward western Europe. The Finnish government derives most of its revenue from taxes on income and property, sales taxes, and excise duties. About two-fifths of the government's expenditures are for education and social services, including housing and health care. This pattern of expenditure is markedly different from the years following World War II; then, much of the Finnish annual budget went to paying war reparations and to rebuilding the nation's infrastructure. Industrial nationalization has not been a general policy in Finland, but in some cases the state has continued to hold a controlling interest in enterprises it has helped to establish. Examples include the railways (Valtionrautatiet), air transportation (Finnair), oil refining and natural gas distribution (Neste), and the national electrical power network (Imatran Voima). In the early 1990s the government began a program of gradually relinquishing its controlling interest in some of those industries. Unemployment was relatively low in Finland until 1991, when it increased rapidly. After peaking at nearly 20 percent of the workforce in 1994, the unemployment rate gradually began to decline. Finland's largest employer organization is the Confederation of Finnish Industry and Employers (formerly called the Finnish Employers' Confederation); the largest trade-union groups are the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions and the Confederation of Unions for Academic Professionals. Finland has subscribed to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade since 1949 and to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development since 1969. It became first an associate (1961) and later a full member (1986) of the European Free Trade Association before leaving that organization to join the European Union in 1995; Finland also became a member of the constituent European Community (until 1993 called the European Economic Community), with which it had maintained a free-trade agreement since 1974. Resources Trees are Finland's most important natural resource. Some three-fourths of the total land area is forested, with pine, spruce, and birch being the predominant species. Government cultivation programs, among other measures, have prevented forest depletion; and acid rain, which has devastated forests in central Europe, has not had any serious consequences in Finland. Finnish peat deposits cover nearly one-third of the country, but only a small fraction of that land is suitable for large-scale peat production. Nearly all the production is used for fuel, with the remainder used in agriculture. A diversity of minerals occurs in the Precambrian bedrock, but mining output is modest, owing to the small size of the deposits and the low metal content of the ore. Most mines are located in the north. Iron is the most important of the industrial metals. The main nonferrous metals are nickel and zinc. Chromium, cobalt, and copper are also economically important. Gold, silver, cadmium, and titanium are obtained as by-products. There is no naturally occurring coal or oil in Finland. Some mica is quarried, mostly for export. The land Relief Finland is heavily forested and contains some 55,000 lakes, numerous rivers, and extensive areas of marshland; viewed from the air, Finland looks like an intricate blue and green jigsaw puzzle. Except in the northwest, relief features do not vary greatly, and travelers on the ground or on the water can rarely see beyond the trees in their immediate vicinity. The landscape nevertheless possesses a strikingif sometimes bleakbeauty. Finland's underlying structure is a huge worn-down shield composed of ancient rock, mainly granite, dating from Precambrian time (3,800,000,000 to 540,000,000 years ago). The land is low-lying in the southern part of the country and higher in the centre and the northeast, while the few mountainous regions are in the extreme northwest, adjacent to Finland's borders with Sweden and Norway. In this area there are several high peaks, including Mount Haltia, which, at 4,357 feet (1,328 metres), is Finland's highest mountain. The coastline of Finland, some 2,760 miles (4,600 kilometres) in length, is extremely indented and dotted with thousands of islands. The greatest number of these are to be found in the southwest, in the Turun (Turku) archipelago, which merges with the land Islands in the west. The southern islands in the Gulf of Finland are mainly of low elevation, while those lying along the southwest coastline may rise to heights of more than 400 feet. The relief of Finland was greatly affected by the Ice Age. The retreating continental glacier left the bedrock littered with morainic deposits in formations of eskers, remarkable winding ridges of stratified gravel and sand, running northwest to southeast. One of the biggest formations is the Salpausselk ridges, three parallel ridges running across southern Finland in an arc pattern. The weight of the glaciers, sometimes miles thick, depressed the Earth's crust by many hundreds of feet. As a consequence, areas that have been released from the weight of the ice sheets have risen and continue to rise, and Finland is still emerging from the sea. Land rise of some 0.4 inch (9 millimetres) annually in the narrow part of the Gulf of Bothnia is gradually turning the old sea bottom into dry land. Drainage and soils Finland's inland waters occupy almost 10 percent of the country's total area; there are 10 lakes of more than 100 square miles in area and tens of thousands of smaller ones. The largest lake, Saimaa, in the southeast, covers about 1,700 square miles. There are many other large lakes near it, including Pijnne and Pielinen, while Oulu is near Kajaani in central Finland, and Inari is in the extreme north. Away from coastal regions, many of Finland's rivers flow into the lakes, which are generally shallowonly three lakes are deeper than about 300 feet. Saimaa itself drains into the much larger Lake Ladoga in Russian territory via the Vuoksi (Vuoksa) River. Drainage from Finland's eastern uplands is through the lake system of Russian Karelia to the White Sea. The Kokemen River, with the town of ets in the background, in southwestern In the extreme north the Paats River and its tributaries drain large areas into the Arctic. On Finland's western coast a series of rivers flow into the Gulf of Bothnia. These include the Tornio, which forms part of Finland's border with Sweden, and the Kemi, at 343 miles Finland's longest river. In the southwest the Kokemen, one of Finland's largest rivers, flows out past the city of Pori (Bjrneborg). Other rivers flow southward into the Gulf of Finland. Soils include those of the gravelly type found in the eskers, as well as extensive marine and lake postglacial deposits in the form of clays and silts, which provide the country's most fertile soils. The northern third of Finland has thick layers of peat, the humus soil of which continues to be reclaimed. Such marshland still covers as much as 30 percent of the countryside. In the land Islands the soils are mainly clay and sand. The people Ethnic and linguistic composition It appears that the ancestors of the Sami were present in Finland by about 7000 BC. As other groups began to enter the area some 3,000 years later, the proto-Sami probably retreated northward. Archaeological remains suggest that this second wave of settlers came from or had contact with what was to become Russia and also Scandinavia and central Europe. Peoples of Uralic (specifically Finno-Ugric) stock dominated two settlement areas. Those who entered southwestern Finland across the Gulf of Finland were the ancestors of the Tavastlanders, the people of southern and western Finland; those who entered from the southeast were the Karelians. Scandinavian peoples occupied the western coast and archipelagoes and also the land Islands. Finland has two national languages, Finnish and Swedish. The Swedish-speaking population, found mainly in the coastal area in the south, southwest, and west and in the land Islands (where Swedish is the sole official language), is slowly declining and constitutes roughly 5 percent of the total. Nearly all of the remainder speaks Finnish; the language is an important nationalist feature, although it is spoken in strong regional dialects. The Sami-speaking minority in the extreme north numbers some 6,000. Religions Christianity entered Finland from both the west and the east as early as the 12th century. The great majority of the people belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, a national church whose bishops are nominated by the head of state. The archbishop has his see at Turku. A small number belong to the Greek Orthodox Church of Finland. The Finnish Orthodox Church was granted autonomy from Moscow in 1920, and in 1923 it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople. It has one archbishop, with his see at Kuopio. No other Christian denomination in Finland claims more than a few thousand members. More than one-tenth of the population have no church affiliation.