Nations in Finnish universities

In Finland, student nations (in Finnish, sg. osakunta, pl. osakunnat; in Swedish (student)nation) are student organisations within which a large proportion of extra-curricular student activity takes place. Though membership is not compulsory, the nations provide one of the main nodes of student social life, along with the faculty-based organisations (ainejärjestöt) at the universities.

The first Finnish student nations were originally established at The Royal Academy of Turku. When the Academy moved to Helsinki after the Great Fire of Turku taking the name University of Helsinki, the nations moved along with it. Their institutional form is based on the original nation system of the University of Uppsala.

There are 15 nations at the University of Helsinki, each one representing a historic region or province of Finland. Four of these nations represent Swedish-speaking regions which overlay some of the remaining 12 regions, which are Finnish-speaking regions. For example, Åbo Nation ("Turku Nation") and Varsinaissuomalainen osakunta ("Finland Proper Nation") both represent a very similar geographic region, though the former is Swedish- and the latter Finnish-Speaking. In addition to the nations at Helsinki University, there is also an association for Swedish-speaking students, Teknologföreningen, at Aalto University School of Science and Technology, and it is also legally a nation.

The 16 nations, those at Helsinki University and Teknologföreningen, have a special legal status as their existence and overall purpose is regulated by the Universities Act. Therefore, organizations termed "nations" at other Finnish universities founded in the 20th century are not nations in the legal sense of the word, but instead associations, regulated by the Associations Act. For example, at the University of Turku, there are four student nations established in the 1920s.

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