 This week's #geoweirdness thread is dedicated to our friends up north in Finland ๐ซ๐ฎ since in two day's time (on ๐๏ธ April 9th) Geomob Finland will take place in Turku. So what's geoweird about Finland? ๐๐งต๐ Details of #geomobfin on April 9th: 10 comments
3/ Mรคrket is part of the Finnish ๐ซ๐ฎ autonomous region of ร land ๐ฆ๐ฝ (which has its own ISO code of AX, and thus also emoji flag). Since the ร land War (part of the Crimean War) in the 1850s between the UK ๐ฌ๐ง, France ๐ซ๐ท and Russia ๐ท๐บ, ร land is politically neutral and entirely demilitarised. It has its own parliament and the sole official language of the region is Swedish. 4/ In the rest of ๐ซ๐ฎ Finland, Finnish and Swedish are both official languages. Finnish is one of the few major non-Indo European languages spoken in Europe (other examples are Estonian, Hungarian, and Basque) 5/ In the North, Finland ๐ซ๐ฎ borders Norway ๐ณ๐ด and Sweden ๐ธ๐ช, the three countries meet on a tiny island in the middle of a lake at the Three-Country Cairn 6/ Relations between the Nordic countries are very friendly, so much so that - as covered in our Norway ๐ณ๐ด #geoweirdness thread - Norway considered giving Finland ๐ซ๐ฎ a mountain for it's 100th birthday a few years ago 7/ Relations with eastern neighbour Russia ๐ท๐บ are not as friendly. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine ๐บ๐ฆ, Finland joined NATO in 2023, ending the long policy of neutrality it had maintained during the cold war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93NATO_relations https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/04/finland-nato-member-brussels-ceremony 10/ Bonus toot - we would be remiss not to seize the rare chance to work a Monty Python reference into a #geoweirdness thread, so please enjoy their musical homage to Finland ๐ซ๐ฎ  @opencage I expected you to mention that many places and roads have official names in two languages (and maybe promote the OpenCage's language feature with that :) Or that it has the 4th largest lake in Europe, but unlike others, it's made of hundreds little parts, which in part gave Finland the title of "the land of thousand lakes". (And also the lake has like 14000 islands and is a super huge multipolygon in OSM that sometimes causes trouble). |
Gregory's Server
2/ A famous Finnish geographic oddity is the tiny island of Mรคrket crossed by the Finland ๐ซ๐ฎ / Sweden ๐ธ๐ช border.
After Finland built a lighthouse in 1885 on the island's highest point it was realised the lighthouse was actually on the Swedish side, so the border was adjusted via a land swap to include the lighthouse in 1985.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4rket
#geoweirdness