Rovaniemi is a city and municipality of Finland. It is the administrative capital and commercial centre of Finland's northernmost province, Lapland, and its southern part Peräpohjola. The city centre is situated about 6 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle and is between the hills of Ounasvaara and Korkalovaara, at the confluence of the river Kemijoki and its tributary, the Ounasjoki. It is the second-largest city of Northern Finland after Oulu, and, together with the capital city Helsinki, it is one of Finland's most significant tourist cities in terms of foreign tourism.
The 21 municipalities of the Lapland Region in Finland are divided on six sub-regions:
Lapland is the largest and northernmost region of Finland. The 21 municipalities in the region cooperate in a Regional Council. Lapland borders the region of North Ostrobothnia in the south. It also borders the Gulf of Bothnia, Norrbotten County in Sweden, Troms and Finnmark County in Norway, and Murmansk Oblast and the Republic of Karelia in Russia. Topography varies from vast mires and forests of the South to fells in the North. The Arctic circle crosses Lapland, so polar phenomena such as the midnight sun and polar night can be seen in Lapland.
Kemi is a town and municipality of Finland. It is located very near the city of Tornio and the Swedish border. The distance to Oulu is 105 kilometres (65 mi) to the south and to Rovaniemi is 117 kilometres (73 mi) to the northeast. It was founded in 1869 by a decree of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia because of its proximity to a deepwater port.
Tornio is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of 1,348.83 square kilometres (520.79 sq mi), of which 161.59 km2 (62.39 sq mi) is water. The population density is 17.97 inhabitants per square kilometre (46.5/sq mi), with a total population of 21,326. It borders the Swedish municipality of Haparanda.
Finland is divided into 69 sub-regional units. The sub-regions are formed by groups of municipalities within the 19 regions of Finland. The sub-regions represent a LAU 1 level of division used in conjunction with the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics.
The Battle of Tornio was the first major engagement between Nazi Germany and Finland in the Lapland War; although hostilities had already begun elsewhere.
The Catholic Church in Finland is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome.
The Battle of Rovaniemi was an event during the 1944 Lapland War. The actual fighting between the components of the Finnish Armoured Division and Finnish 3rd Division against the troops of the German Twentieth Mountain Army took place at the vicinity of the town of Rovaniemi. The notoriety of the encounter derives from the near-total destruction of the town.
Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences (KTUAS) was a Finnish University of applied sciences located in Kemi and Tornio. It was founded in 1992 as Kemi-Tornio Polytechnic, a merger of several institutes of higher vocational education in the Kemi-Tornio region of Finland. It was merged with Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences into Lapland University of Applied Sciences on January 1, 2014.
Kemi railway station is located in the town of Kemi in the Lapland Province of Finland. It is operated by VR. The distance to the Helsinki Central railway station, via Haapamäki and Oulu stations is 858.3 kilometres.
During World War II, the Lapland War saw fighting between Finland and Nazi Germany – effectively from September to November 1944 – in Finland's northernmost region, Lapland. Though the Finns and the Germans had been fighting against the Soviet Union since 1941 during the Continuation War (1941–1944), peace negotiations had already been conducted intermittently during 1943–1944 between Finland, the Western Allies and the USSR, but no agreement had been reached. The Moscow Armistice, signed on 19 September 1944, demanded that Finland break diplomatic ties with Germany and expel or disarm any German soldiers remaining in Finland after 15 September 1944.
The Peräpohjola dialects are forms of Finnish spoken in Lapland in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The dialect group belongs to the Western Finnish dialects and it is divided into five more specific dialect groups.
The Province of Lapland was a province of Finland from 1938 to 2009.
Lapland University of Applied Sciences is a Finnish University of applied sciences located in Kemi, Tornio and Rovaniemi. It was founded on January 1, 2014 as a merger between Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences and Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences. The merger carried over all the features of the previous organisations.
Kauko Ensio Seppänen was a Finnish sculptor, professor (1978) and sculpture pioneer in Lapland. He created a total of 127 public sculptures. On the occasion of his crafting more public sculptures than any other artist in Finland, the 7 September 1984 issue of Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat bore the headline "Sculptor Ensio Seppänen, is a Finnish record man".
Sea Lapland occupies the most southwest region of Finnish Lapland.
Southern Lapland was the northernmost part of the historical province of Ostrobothnia, and has sometimes been considered a separate region, but it is now part of the Lapland region. It belonged to the province of Oulu for a long time, but from 1938 it formed the southern part of the province of Lapland, which was founded that year. Parts of the Salla-Kuusamo area, which included the easternmost part of southern Lapland, were ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940, after the end of the Winter War and again in 1944, after the end of the Continuation War.
