ÅLAND ( Ahvenanmaa / O:land )

The Åland Islands or ( Åland Finnish: Ahvenanmaa )The official name, Landskapet Åland, means "the Region of Åland"; landskap is cognate to English "landscape" is an archipelago province at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea belonging to Finland. It is autonomous, demilitarised and is the only monolingually Swedish-speaking region in Finland. It is the smallest region of Finland, constituting 0.51% of its land area and 0.54% of its population.

Åland comprises Fasta Åland on which 90% of the population resides and a further 6,500 skerries and islands to its east. Fasta Åland is separated from the coast of Sweden by 38 kilometres (24 mi) of open water to the west. In the east, the Åland archipelago is contiguous with the Finnish Archipelago Sea. Åland's only land border is located on the uninhabited skerry of Märket, which it shares with Sweden. Åland's original name was in the Proto-Norse language *Ahvaland which means "land of water". Ahva is related to the Latin word for water, "aqua". In Swedish, this first developed into Áland and eventually into Åland, literally "river land"—even though rivers are not a prominent feature of Åland's geography. The Finnish and Estonian names of the island, Ahvenanmaa and Ahvenamaa ("perch land"), are seen to preserve another form of the old name. Another theory suggests that the Finnish Ahvenanmaa would be the original name of the archipelago, from which the Swedish Åland derives.  Åland's autonomous status means that those provincial powers normally exercised by representatives of the central Finnish government are largely exercised by its own government. 

The Åland Islands occupy a position of strategic importance, as they command one of the entrances to the port of Stockholm, as well as the approaches to the Gulf of Bothnia, in addition to being situated near the Gulf of Finland. The Åland archipelago includes nearly three hundred habitable islands, of which about eighty are inhabited; the remainder are merely some 6,200 skerries and desolate rocks.  The archipelago is connected to Åboland archipelago in the east (Finnish: Turunmaan saaristo, Swedish: Åbolands skärgård)—the archipelago adjacent to the southwest coast of Finland. Together they form the Archipelago Sea. To the West from Åland is the Sea of Åland and to the North is the Bothnian Sea.

The first stamps of the Åland Islands were issued on 1 March 1984.

Registered airmail envelope from Aland. Even though Aland is an autonomous region of Finland, it has autonomy and own ISO 3166 code - AX. Posten Aland is the postal service provider, as a separate company from Posti Finland. The cover posted on March 24, 2019 and I received on April 08, 2019.

Aland Philatelic bureau always provide perfect service for philatelists .The cover posted on June 8,2015 by Kimmo Liljeroos from its capital city Mariehamn, and I received on June 17,2015.

The cover posted on 02 February 2014 by Kimmo Liljeroos from its capital city Mariehamn, and I received on 10 February 2014.