The writing of this book has given the author great pleasure. I hope that the reader may also find enjoyment. Finland is not a major world power and is not on the main trade routes, nor is it a strategic corridor to anywhere. This may be why it has so often been ignored and misunderstood by the rest of the world – especially by the English-speaking world which ought to know better.

During the last twenty years there has been no book comparable to the present volume which attempts to include a summary of Finnish geography and history and an assessment of the country's present position in the modern world: in other words, to explain Finland to the rest of the world. The incomparable Bill Mead, to whom the present author owes so much, has given us the picture as he saw it 20 years ago: his Finland (1968), his studies of various aspects of Finnish economic geography and agriculture, and his specialist studies of the Åland Islands leave all who follow him in his debt. The present author's ‘Economy of Finland in the Twentieth Century (1987) should logically have followed this volume, but the vagaries of publishing in Britain and the unpredictability of my health made this order of events impossible. However, I have been encouraged by the reception of the Economy to feel confident that a reading public awaits a more general historical survey.