Located in the far corner of Europe between Sweden and the Soviet Union, Finland is one of the northernmost countries of the world. And it is cold, but not as frigid and snowbound as you might think, thanks to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream.

Most of the 4,743,000 inhabitants of this “land of a thousand lakes” speak Finnish, although Swedish is the mother tongue of about 7 percent of the population. It is believed that the Finns originally migrated here from somewhere in southeastern Russia. They are closely related to the Estonians and, more distantly, to the Hungarians.

In those early years, it was far from easy to reach the people in this large, sparsely populated country, a third of which lies north of the Arctic Circle. Vast forests cover a third of the land, and water and swamps another tenth. There are beautiful lakes​—not just 1,000, but almost 60,000—​with more than twice as many islands, including some 30,000 around the coastline. Hence, traveling to reach the people is a slow process, and this was especially true in those early times. Today, roads and transportation have improved tremendously, and there are more cars, fine trains and buses and an excellent airline system.