Municipalities of Finland - Statistics

Statistics

As of 2011, there are 336 municipalities in Finland, of which 108 are cities. As of 2008, 19 municipalities were unilingually Swedish (16 in the autonomous Åland and three in Ostrobothnia). 43 municipalities were bilingual: 22 with Swedish as the majority language (all but five in Ostrobothnia and Åboland) and 21 with Finnish as the majority language (all but five in the historical province of Uusimaa).

Although there are exceptions, the line between a city and a small town or rural municipality can be drawn at the city of Hamina with 21,250 inhabitants. In the population ranking, above Hamina there are only cities (and their surrounding areas). However, there are many cities with much smaller populations than Hamina. Finland's smallest city, Kaskinen, dates back to 1785 but had a population of only 1,374 (30 September 2012).

The areas of the municipalities vary, as the population is the primary criterion for forming a municipality. The largest are found in Lapland, of which the largest is Inari at 17,333.77 km² (130 km square). The smallest municipalities are very small towns. Kaskinen is an independent town with the land area of only 10.49 km². Kauniainen, which was originally a corporation in Espoo, is only 6.00 km².