The Nordic Council has released its Nordic Statistics Handbook 2011, which contains all sorts of interesting facts about life in the Nordic region over the last year.
The book is available to buy, but its key facts and figures can also be seen online for free at the Nordic Council website, Norden.org.
Among the areas covered in the Nordisk Statistisk Arbog are that the most popular names given to babies in 2010 were Aron and Emilia in Iceland, William and Isabella in Denmark, Jonas and Anna in the Faroe Islands, Malik and Ivaana in Greenland, Elias and Emma in Finland, Leo and Ella in the Aland Islands, Lucas and Emma in Norway and Oscar and Maja in Sweden.
The publication also shows that more women than men in the Nordic region choose to go to university and that the gender imbalance is biggest in Iceland, where 66 percent of university students are female. 63.4 percent of students are female in Sweden and the proportion is least in Denmark, with 58.7 women for every 41.3 men in university.
Around 4,000 ‘trackless’ children entered the Nordic countries in 2010. By far the largest group of them were 15-17 years-old and Sweden was their top destination. That figure is 2,000 lower than in 2009. ‘Trackless’ children are individuals younger than 18 who arrive in the Nordic region unaccompanied by a parent or guardian, or who are later abandoned after arrival.
The book contains comparative statistics for the five Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; as well as for the independent territories of the Aland Islands, Faroe Islands and Greenland.