Do you know how many people live in Finland?
Do you want to guess?
5 million…10 million…30 million?
Let me give you a hint. It’s fewer than you think.
The population of Finland is just 5.5 million.
That’s quite a few. Especially if we compare it to some Central European countries with similar land area.
For example in Poland, which is about the same size as Finland, lives almost 40 million people. The population of Germany is over 80 million, and it’s just a little bit larger than Finland. Even Finland’s neighboring country Sweden has much bigger population of over 10 million. Only European country that comes close both by it’s size and population is Finland’s other neighboring country Norway.
Finland is Europe’s ninth largest country by it’s size, but only 23rd biggest by population. So Finland is big in size but small in population. This means that Finland is more sparsely populated than many other European countries. The average population density in Finland is 18 inhabitants per km². The most crowded part of the country is the capital region with the population of 1.4 million. There the population density is about 170 km². Meanwhile the Northern Finland is very thinly populated. On the average there are just two person per km².
Sources:
Statistics Finland www.stat.fi