Tornio

Tornio is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of , of which is water. The population density is , with a total population of. Tornio is unilingually Finnish with a negligible number of native Swedish speakers, although this does not count vast numbers of bilinguals who speak Swedish as a second language, with an official target of universal working bilingualism for both border municipalities. History The delta of the Torne River has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age, and there are currently (1995) 16 settlement sites known in the area, similar to those found in Vuollerim. The Swedish part of the region is not far from the oldest permanent settlement site found in Scandinavia. A former hypothesis that this region was uninhabited and colonised from the Viking Age onward has now been abandoned.