Finland And Sweden

Finland and Sweden are known as the lands of fitness fanatics. There are four Scandinavian languages in northern Europe, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and, Finnish. The first three are so similar as to have a high degree of mutual intelligibility. But the Finnish language is so different from any other language that there are widespread disagreements as to how it originated. Some believe it to be distantly related to Hungarian, which is another language not like any other, or maybe the language of the Basques in Spain and France.

Finland today is a leader in information technology, the land of Linux and Nokia. The very widely used Linux is a kind of open-source operating system and is what I see as an ideal example of the ultimate fulfillment of Marxist theory through modern information technology.

Much of the land area of Finland is actually occupied by small lakes, carved by the movement of ice age glaciers. Finland is between Sweden, to the west, and Russia, to the east. It has belonged to both, from Swedish to Russian control in 1809, and then becoming independent of Tsarist Russia upon the October Revolution of 1917. The Swedish language is still widely spoken in Finland.

Turku is Finland's original city. Upon gaining control of Finland from Sweden, Russia moved the capital to the present capital city of Helsinki. The cathedral and castle of Turku are both from the 13th Century. The following scenes begin at Turku Castle.

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

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Here is the area around Turku Cathedral.

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Helsinki, from the Sixteenth Century, is the present capital of Finland  When Finland was part of Sweden, and the Romanov Dynasty of nearby Russia built St. Petersburg as their capital, with the naval base at Kronstadt, Sweden responded by building a coastal fortress at Helsinki called, it's Finnish name, Suomenlinna. This is a look at it.

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Helsinki Cathedral is on Senate Square.

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Near Helsinki is the city of Espoo.

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Both countries are known for their very high quality of life. But the "Swedish Model" of moderate socialism is admired across the world. Stockholm, built on an archipelago of islands, is Sweden's capital today. But the country seems to have really begun in Uppsala. A town called Sigtuna may also have been an early Swedish capital. The cathedral at Uppsala was Sweden's primary cathedral. The following scenes are at 16th Century Uppsala Castle.

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The oldest part of the present capital city of Stockholm is called Gamla Stan. It is on an island called Stadsholmen. Here is the main square called Stortorget, next to which are the Royal Palace and Stockholm Cathedral.

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Here is the modern buildings of Stockholm.

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Sweden's residence today is Drottningholm.

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Gothenburg is Sweden's major coastal city that faces westward, toward Denmark. This is the home of Volvo, the safety-conscious carmaker that does not enforce it's patents on safety features, allowing other manufacturers to use Volvo developments to make their cars safer.

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Malmo is another coastal city that faces west toward Denmark, which was once an enemy and which owned Malmo. But Malmo is from the Thirteenth Century. The following scenes begin in Malmo Castle, which is a Danish fortress from the Sixteenth Century.

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