Short answers, pulled from the story.
Finland is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, opposite Estonia. Its capital and largest city is Helsinki.
Finland declared independence on the 4th of December 1917, and the Finnish Parliament officially approved the Declaration of Independence on the 6th of December 1917. Russia, led by Vladimir Lenin, was the first country to recognise Finland's independence, on the 4th of January 1918.
Finland became a member of NATO on the 4th of April 2023. The move followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, after which the Finnish Parliament voted 188 to 8 in favour of accession on the 17th of May 2022.
Finland fought the Soviet Union in the Winter War, launched on the 30th of November 1939, and in the Continuation War from 1941. It lost 12 percent of its land area and its second largest city, Vyborg, but retained its independence and democracy and was never occupied.
Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Finland. Finnish is the mother tongue of 83.5 percent of the population and Swedish of 5.0 percent. Finnish belongs to the Finnic subgroup of the Uralic languages and is closely related to Estonian and Karelian.
Finland introduced universal suffrage in the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1906, becoming the first country in Europe to do so. It was also the first country in the world to give all adult citizens the right to run for public office.
Finland has over 180,000 recorded lakes, with about 168,000 larger than 500 square metres, shaped by the Ice Age. Its largest lake, Saimaa, is the fourth largest in Europe, and the land is still rising through post-glacial rebound.