The Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomi, Suomen tasavalta, Swedish: Republiken Finland , is one of the Nordic countries. Situated in Northern Europe, it shares land borders with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east and Norway to the north while Estonia lies to its south. Finland is bounded by the Baltic Sea with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west. The Åland Islands, off the south-western coast, are an autonomous province of Finland. ------------------------------------------------------------ Finland has a population of over five million people spread over more than 330,000 km² (127,000 sq. mi) making it one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. --------------------------- Finland is ranked 11th on the 2006 United Nations Human Development Index. ---------------------------------- Along with Estonian, Hungarian and Maltese, Finnish is one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin. ------------------------------------------------On March 29, 1809, after being conquered by the armies of Russian Emperor Alexander I, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire until the end of 1917. Old Finland was returned to the Grand Duchy in 1812. During the Russian era, the Finnish language started to gain recognition by both the imperial court and the governing bodies, first probably to sever the cultural and emotional ties with Sweden and thereafter, from the 1860s onwards, as a result of a strong nationalist movement, known as the Fennoman movement. Milestones included the publication of what would become Finland's national epic, the Kalevala, in 1835; and the Finnish language achieving equal legal status with Swedish in 1892. In 1906, Universal suffrage was adopted in the Grand Duchy of Finland. However, the relationship between the Grand Duchy and the Russian Empire gradually soured when the Russian government made moves to restrict the Finnish autonomy. Wishes for national independence gained ground, first among radical nationalists and Socialists.---------During World War II, Finland fought the Soviet Union twice: in the Winter War of 1939–1940 and in the Continuation War of 1941–1944 in accordance with Operation Barbarossa in which Germany invaded the Soviet Union. This was followed by the Lapland War of 1944–1945, when Finland forced the Germans out of northern Finland. After the wars there were land mine clearance operations in Karelia and Lapland plus the enormous task of sea mine clearance in the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea during 1944 - 1950. The mines in Lapland especially slowed down the rebuilding and caused casualties. Treaties signed in 1947 and 1948 with the Soviet Union included obligations, restraints, and reparations on Finland vis-à-vis the Soviet Union as well as further Finnish territorial concessions (cf. the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940). Finland ceded most of Finnish Karelia, Salla, and Petsamo, which amounted to 10% of its land area, 20% of industrial capacity and 400,000 evacuees. Establishing trade with the Western powers, such as Great Britain, and the reparations to the Soviet Union caused Finland to transform itself from a primarily agrarian economy to an industrialised one. Even after reparations were fulfilled, Finland continued to trade with the Soviet Union in the framework of bilateral trade. Ultimately, the Soviet Union had a national debt to Finland. Russia assumed the debt after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and finally cleared it in 2006.