Finland, officially the Republic of Finland (in Finnish: Suomi), is the northernmost and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. By size, it is the fifth-largest country in Western Europe with its 338,440 km² of land, and with a population of 5.5 million (16 persons/km²). Politically, Finland has been a parliamentary democracy since its independence 1917, after having been a grand duchy of Russian empire for 108 years and prior to that a part of Sweden for 600 years.