90 Years of Finland's Independence

Nine rowers in a boat. The years 2007 and 1917 appear above and below the design respectively. The mint mark is on the left and the country reference "FI" on the right.

On 6 December 1917, the Finnish Senate declared independence from Russia — a step that, after decades as part of the Russian Empire and a brief, bloody civil war, laid the foundation for the modern Finnish state. The declaration of independence came during a period of upheaval across Europe: the First World War was drawing to a close, and the Russian Revolution had shaken the tsarist empire. Finland seized this historic window and gained its sovereignty, which Russia under Lenin officially recognized as early as December 1917. The civil war that followed between Reds and Whites in 1918 left deep social scars that took the country decades to overcome.

Finnish national identity draws on a language and culture of its own that survived centuries of Swedish and Russian rule. The works of composer Jean Sibelius — above all Finlandia, from 1899 — became a musical symbol of the national awakening long before independence became reality. The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, gave the 19th-century cultural movement its literary core. Today, Finland is among the wealthiest and most stable democracies in the world, a member of the European Union since 1995 and of NATO since 2023. To mark the 90th anniversary of independence, Finland issued a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2007 recalling this founding moment.