The tiny province of the Aland Islands - located between old rivals Sweden and Finland - has become an official country with no fanfare whatsoever and is now entitled to its own, new, top-level Internet domain, .ax.
The International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) actually granted the islands - given autonomy in 1951 and boasting 25,000 inhabitants - their official recognition (
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-serv.../nlv9e-ax.html ) on 13 February this year but somehow we only heard about it last week.
The Aland Islands (although the Finnish will have it known they are the Ahvenanmaa Islands) are made up of 6,500 islands and outcrops, 65 miles east of Stockholm and cover 572 square miles. People only live on 65 of them, however, and 90 per cent live on the biggest island - Fasta Aland. Fasta only has one city where over half the population live.
They have their own flag which is a Swedish flag with a strangely English-looking red cross stuck on the top. They have an assembly called the Landsting which decides its own laws, and a seat in the Finnish Parliament. The islands have jumped between Swedish and Finnish ownership over the centuries and while Swedish is the language and most influences the culture, the last people to own them were the Finns. A ruling by the League of Nations in 1921 gave the islands their own parliament and it has been independence all the way from there.
Source:
The REG!
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