Origin of Finnish: Finnish has its roots in the Proto-Finnic language family, and for a long time it was not a written language but was used solely in spoken form. During the Middle Ages Finland was under Swedish rule, so German, Swedish and Latin were the written languages of business, administration and religion, respectively. It was only during the 16th century that the written form of the language was standardized. 

Regional differences: There are only small differences between the dialects, mainly focused in the pronunciation and language melody. Grammar and vocabulary is largely standardized, with very little dialectal variation.