The Republic of Finland is one of the Nordic countries. Situated in Northern Europe, it shares land borders on the Scandinavian Peninsula with Sweden to the west, Russia to the east and Norway to the north while Estonia lies to its south. Finland is bounded by the Baltic Sea with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west. The Åland Islands, off the south-western coast, are an autonomous, demilitarised administrative province of Finland. The Republic of Finland is a member state of the United Nations and a member of the European Union. Along with Estonian, Hungarian and Maltese, Finnish is one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin.