Things you didn't know about Finland

• According to the PISA study, measuring the skills of 15-year-olds in topics relevant to everyday life, Finland has ranked at the top in education.
• Finland has been at the top of the worldwide press freedom ranking list every year since the publication of the first index by Reporters Without Borders in 2002.
• Finland has the highest suicide rate among GNP nations.
• Over 80% of Finnish families own a lake or island where they have a summer cottage. There are about 190,000 lakes in Finland and thousands of islands.

• The tango is very popular in Finland and most Finns know how to tango and enjoy doing it often.
• Most Finns have a sauna in their house or apartment. The most famous one, the smoke sauna, is a one-room wood hut where rocks are heated by a wood fire, the smoke escaping through a small hole in the roof. The bathers enter naked and generally take along a sheet of paper to sit on. Steam is generated by throwing water on the hot rocks. After about 15 minutes, the bathers rise up and run down to the lake for a dip in the cool water, then return to enjoy another round of sauna.
• Finland has the most mobile phones and the most email addresses per capita of any nation in the world. It is home to Nokia, which is named after a town in Finland where the company has been in existence for decades before becoming a cell phone leader.
• Both the president of Finland and the mayor of Helsinki are women. Well, that's not true anymore, but still. Finland was the first nation to give women the vote.
• Military service is compulsory for all young men, or they may serve alternate community service.
• Helsinki is the northernmost national capital in the world. About a third of the country above the Arctic Circle, with long months of darkness and the Northern Lights. In the summer, they have long months of midnight sun.