In the following three chapters, we look at the context of Finland's achievements. The first chapter focuses on geography and climate, which are issues that invariably arise early on in any conversation about the country. Finland is often described as remote, but remoteness is relative. It very much depends on where you are looking from, and how much more easily (for the affluent at least) everywhere is now connected to everywhere else as compared to how difficult travel was even in the recent past. We begin the chapter with a map that puts Finland at its centre, showing how a large part of the world's surface looks from that vantage point.

Chapter 1 continues by showing just how warm the summers are in Finland and how cold it can be in winter, but also how clear the skies can be and how clean the air is. Outsiders are rarely aware of the large geographical variations in climate across the country. We end our introductory chapter by describing how ancient Finland is, geologically speaking, and how its landscape of lakes and forest includes places where rare elements are found in abundance. Although Finland is one of the places where the effects of global warming are likely to be the least adverse, it is also one of the countries at the forefront of initiatives to reduce, mitigate and adapt to climate change – including, controversially, the building of new nuclear power plants that are due to begin operation in 2020 (Reuters 2019).

The second chapter in this section considers the history of Finland amid the empires that surrounded it and dominated it for so long. We chart how for centuries it was the poorest of nations, and show how its towns and cities grew along with the development of transportation routes between its countless lakes; we detail its many border changes, and speculate on the impact of Finland's past as a colony on the outlook of Finns today.

Our third and final chapter in Part I gives a brief overview of the economy and the welfare system that Finland is so famous for.