Tornio is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of 1,348.83 square kilometres (520.79 sq mi), of which 161.59 km² (62.39 sq mi) is water. The population density is 17.97 inhabitants per square kilometre (46.5/sq mi), with a total population of 21,000. It borders the Swedish municipality of Haparanda (in Finnish: Haaparanta). Tornio and Haparanda have a history as twin cities, and are currently set to merge under the names TornioHaparanda and HaparandaTornio. A new city centre is under construction on the international border and several municipal services are shared. The towns also share a common golf course, situated astride the border. The new IKEA store in Haparanda has signposting in Finnish as well as in Swedish, and all prices are signposted in two currencies. In spite of being a border city Tornio is unilingually Finnish with a negligible number of native Swedish speakers, although this does not count vast numbers of bilinguals who speak Swedish as a second language, with an official target of universal working bilingualism for both border municipalities. read more…
Kemi is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located very near the city of Tornio and the Swedish border. The distance to Oulu is 105 kilometres (65 mi) to the south and to Rovaniemi is 117 kilometres (73 mi) to the northeast. It was founded in 1869 by a decree of the EmperorAlexander II of Russia because of its proximity to a deepwater port. The town has a population of 20.000 (288.5 sq mi) and covers an area of 747.28 km² (288.53 sq mi) of which 652.1 square kilometers (251.8 sq mi) are water. The population density is 209.68 inhabitants per square kilometre (543.1/sq mi). Kemi is commonly dubbed “Monaco of Finland”. read more…
The Åland Islands form an archipelago in the Baltic Sea. They are situated at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia and form an autonomous, demilitarised, monolingually Swedish-speaking region of Finland. The islands collectively constitute the smallest region of Finland, with only 0.49% of its land area, and 0.50% of its population. read more…
