Most Finns are of Scandinavian-Baltic extraction. Finnish belongs to the small Finno-Ugric linguistic group and is a legacy of the country's earliest invaders from Asia. Although they were later ousted by the ancestors of today's Finns, their language was retained. Lappish, also a Finno-Ugric language, is spoken by the small Sami (Lapp) population, who live above the Arctic Circle. Around 6% of the population live in the ┼land Islands in the southwest and speak Swedish.
More than 50% of Finns live in the five southernmost districts around Helsinki. Families tend to be close-knit, although divorce rates are high. The sauna is an integral part of everyday life; there are 1.5 million saunas among five million Finns.
Finnish women have a long tradition of political and economic participation. They were the first in Europe to get the vote, in 1906, and the first in the world able to run for parliament. Almost 50% of women now work outside the home. Both the governor of the central bank and the defense minister are women.
