Finland - Inari

FINLAND
Inari.

Sent by Heli, a postcrosser from Finland.

This is from Wikipedia : Inari (Inari Sami: Aanaar, Northern Sami: Anár, Skolt Sami: Aanar, Swedish: Enare) is Finland's largest, sparsely populated municipality with four official languages, more than any other in the country. Its major sources of income are lumber industry and nature maintenance. With the museum Siida in the village of Inari, it is a center of Sami culture. The airport in Ivalo and the country's key north-south European Route E75 (Finland's National Road 4) bring summer and winter vacationers who look for resorts with access to well-preserved, uncrowded outdoors.

The municipality of Inari has a population of 6,779 (31 January 2011).[2] The population density is 0.45 inhabitants per square kilometre (1.2 /sq mi).

Its two largest villages are Ivalo and Inari. Other villages are Törmänen, Keväjärvi, Koppelo, Sevettijärvi–Näätämö, Saariselkä, Nellim, Angeli, Kaamanen, Kuttura, Lisma, Partakko, and Riutula.

The municipality has four official languages: Finnish, Inari Sami (ca. 400 estimated speakers), Skolt Sami (ca. 400 speakers), and Northern Sami (ca. 700 speakers). The estimates of how many people have some command of each of the Sami languages differ from the number of people who list them as their mother tongues. Of the total population of 6,863 in 2010, 6,366 people registered Finnish as their mother tongue and 400 one of the Sami languages. 97 inhabitants were native speakers of other languages.

Only about 1%, 78 persons, were citizens of countries other than Finland in 2010.