Which country has the most islands?
a) Japan
b) Canada
c) The Philippines
d) Finland
e) Indonesia
Which country has the most islands?
(Scroll down for the answer…)
There is some debate about which country has the most islands, Indonesia or Finland. The CIA World Factbook states that Indonesia has 17,508 islands. Meanwhile, Finland's Official Tourism Board boasts 180,000 islands. I did a bunch of research on this (because I am a crazy person) and it looks like d) Finland is the winner according to most sources.
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Woohoo! Thanks again 🙂
How about Sweden? Maybe over 200000? Or Canada?
I guess it will change as the seas rise….
its canada. they have at least 300,000 islands, and several thousand that are not accounted for. the canadian arctic archipelago is considered the largest archipelago in the world, with over 36,000 islands stretched over 1,424,500 km2 . just one relatively small bay in one lake in southern canada has 30,000 islands. its coastline is four times longer than any other country and is completely littered with islands. the problem is that canada is a huge, hulking country, the second largest in the world, but its population is among the lowest in the world. much of the country is uninhabited wilderness, and no one has ever bothered to calculate the enormous number of canadas islands, or lakes, waterfalls, mountains or bays for that matter.
Sweden has 221,800 islands according to a study in 2001. The count was conducted by their official statistics agency. Google it. 🙂
Hi Jeppe – Thank you for weighing in. According to my Google search, everything says the count could be as high as 221,800 and as low as 24,000. In any case…a lot of islands!
thanks for sharing. I didn’t think it be Finland
Well, Sweden has 221 831 islands, but only about 98 400 of these are surrounded by sea water, the rest you’ll find in any of the 95 700 lakes that is larger than 10 000 sq meters. Here’s some official statistics http://www.scb.se/statistik/AA/OV0904/2003M00/A01SA0301_03.pdf
It’s a little bit old but I think you get the picture.
Thanks for the input, Leif!
Indonesia has 17508 “proper” islands of which around 6000 are inhabited and 922 are permanently inhabited. If Indonesia where to count every rock jutting out of the ocean as an island they would outnumber those of all the other countries mentioned above. Perhaps when judging which country has the most islands, the true measure should be on “permanently inhabited” islands.
No country on earth has more islands than Canada. Period.