Drill the map, not flashcards. Free, no account.
Loading game...
Can you place all 101 departments of France?
Can you place all 342 Dutch gemeenten?
Can you locate all 15 counties of Norway?
Can you locate all 16 states of Germany?
Something on this map looks wrong? Report a map issue
Finland is a long country with few places to be in it: most of its people live in a band along the south and west coast, and the rest is lakes, forest and then Lapland. Knowing you are in Finland says little about where, because Helsinki and Utsjoki are as far apart as Helsinki and Berlin. The region, or maakunta, is the unit that fixes it. This page and the game cover all of them, the five groups Finland itself sorts them into, and the clues that tell you which one you are standing in.
A region is a statistical and planning unit, and it is the tier that Finnish maps, weather forecasts and regional news are cut by. Each has a regional council, a joint authority of its municipalities, which plans land use and regional development, and a regional capital that is nearly always the biggest city in it. Regions are not where health care is run: since 2023 that belongs to 21 wellbeing services counties, which are cut along nearly the same lines but are a separate tier, and which are not what this game asks about.
Most regions are named for the old province they sit in or the river valley they follow: Kymenlaakso is the valley of the Kymi and Pirkanmaa the land around Tampere. The English names in the game are the ones the Finnish government uses in English. They are not always the ones older atlases print: Southwest Finland is Varsinais-Suomi, which older English maps call Finland Proper, and Kanta-Häme is Tavastia Proper. The Finnish names are one switch away in the start dialog.
The map is not the one of twenty years ago. Finland has had regions since the 1990s, and the number has shrunk with them. Eastern Uusimaa was folded into Uusimaa in 2011, which is why the Helsinki region now reaches all the way east to the border with Kymenlaakso, and other mergers and boundary changes since have followed municipal ones. A map that still shows a separate Itä-Uusimaa is from before 2011.
Åland is the odd one. It is an autonomous, demilitarised archipelago in the Baltic whose only official language is Swedish, with its own parliament and its own stamps. It is still counted as one of Finland's 19 regions, and it is the only one that is not on the mainland.
The traps are in the names of the Ostrobothnias and the Savonias.
There are four Ostrobothnias, and they are neighbours. From south to north along the west coast: South Ostrobothnia, inland around Seinäjoki, Ostrobothnia on the coast around Vaasa, Central Ostrobothnia, the small one around Kokkola, and Northern Ostrobothnia, the large one around Oulu. Only three of them touch the sea.
Northern and Southern Savonia are not the same shape of problem. Northern Savonia is the larger and sits around Kuopio, and Southern Savonia, around Mikkeli, sits between it and the Russian border to the south east. Neither touches the sea.
Kainuu and North Karelia are not on the coast either, and both sit on the eastern border. Kainuu is the long one in the middle, around Kajaani, and North Karelia is the one below it, around Joensuu.
The five groups are the major regions Finland uses for statistics, the ones that appear on a map of the country's NUTS 2 level. Helsinki-Uusimaa is Uusimaa alone, the capital region and the most populated, and Åland is a major region in its own right, so those two groups are a single answer each. Southern Finland is Southwest Finland, Kanta-Häme, Päijät-Häme, Kymenlaakso and South Karelia, which is the south coast east and west of the capital and the lakes behind it. Western Finland is Satakunta, Pirkanmaa, Central Finland and the two southern Ostrobothnias. Northern and Eastern Finland is everything else: the Savonias, the two Karelias, Kainuu, Central and Northern Ostrobothnia, and Lapland, which together cover most of the country and hold under a quarter of its people.
Lapland: by far the largest region, a little under a third of the land area of Finland and the part that reaches north of the Arctic Circle. It is also the least populated, and the only region where you can cross into Norway and Sweden as well as Russia. Its capital is Rovaniemi, the one town of any size, and if the road is long, empty and lined with spruce and pine, this is the likeliest answer.
Åland: a scatter of islands between Finland and Sweden, with Mariehamn as its town. It is the only region where every sign is in Swedish and the only one that is not attached to the mainland, so it is the easy answer for anything on a ferry route or a flat, rocky island under a very large sky.
Central Ostrobothnia: a narrow region on the west coast, around Kokkola, wedged between Ostrobothnia to the south and Northern Ostrobothnia to the north. It is the one of the four Ostrobothnias a player is most likely to lose, because it is small and its neighbours both share part of its name.
19, counting Åland. Eastern Uusimaa was merged into Uusimaa in 2011, which took the number from 20 to 19. The regions are not the same thing as the 21 wellbeing services counties that run health care and rescue services since 2023, although most of those follow the same lines.
Helsinki (Uusimaa), Turku (Southwest Finland), Pori (Satakunta), Hämeenlinna (Kanta-Häme), Tampere (Pirkanmaa), Lahti (Päijät-Häme), Kouvola (Kymenlaakso), Lappeenranta (South Karelia), Mikkeli (Southern Savonia), Kuopio (Northern Savonia), Joensuu (North Karelia), Jyväskylä (Central Finland), Seinäjoki (South Ostrobothnia), Vaasa (Ostrobothnia), Kokkola (Central Ostrobothnia), Oulu (Northern Ostrobothnia), Kajaani (Kainuu), Rovaniemi (Lapland) and Mariehamn (Åland).
Finland has two official languages, and Swedish is the first language of a small minority along the south and west coast and the only official language of Åland. Uusimaa is Nyland in Swedish, Ostrobothnia is Österbotten and Southwest Finland is Egentliga Finland. The game's local names are the Finnish ones.
Yes. It is an autonomous region with its own parliament, a Swedish-speaking population and a demilitarised status that dates from 1921, and it counts as one of Finland's 19 regions.
Lapland is the largest by a wide margin, at a little under a third of the country. Åland is the smallest by area, with Kymenlaakso and Kanta-Häme the smallest on the mainland.
The four Ostrobothnias: South, Central and Northern Ostrobothnia, and Ostrobothnia itself, which is the one on the coast around Vaasa. Northern and Southern Savonia are the other obvious pair, and Kanta-Häme and Päijät-Häme share a word and a border.
Finnish, with Swedish names added in the municipalities that are bilingual, along the south and west coast. In Åland they are in Swedish alone, and in the far north of Lapland some carry Sámi names beside the Finnish ones.
The tier below this one is Finland Municipalities, and the 19 regions are its groups. The other European administrative maps here are Norway Counties, Sweden Counties, Germany States and Poland Voivodeships.
