by Przemysław Myszka
The Åland Islands are unique in many ways, not least because of their exceptional beauty nor tangled history, somewhat split between Sweden and Finland (the autonomous province is the only monolingually Swedish-speaking region in Finland).
Though it's the country's smallest region, accounting for just 0.49% of its land area and 0.5% of the population, it nonetheless houses the Baltic Sea region's 10th largest passenger port, Mariehamn, taking care of over three million ferry and cruise passengers each year.