by Keith Redfern

Created on: July 09, 2009   Last Updated: February 22, 2011

Europe stretches west-east from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains in central Russia, and north-south from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Although one of the smaller continents of the world, it contains a large number of countries, many of which are well known, but several of which are not.

The countries of Europe can be identified in a number of ways, both as groups, and individually. An atlas map would assist greatly when trying to identify these countries, and it would need to be an up-to-date map as country names and shapes have changed several times, even since WW2.

In the north, four countries make up the area known as Scandinavia: Norway on the west coast, Sweden, its eastern neighbour, Finland, further east, and Denmark, further south. These four are separated by the Baltic Sea from the three small countries known as the Baltic states: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

The Baltic states used to be part of the Soviet Union, but are now independent and members of the European Union. Their huge neighbour Russia lies across their eastern borders and stretches across to the Ural Mountains and beyond to border China and the Pacific Ocean.

At the southern end of the Baltic Sea is Poland, another ex-communist bloc state, as are its eastern neighbours Belorussia and Ukraine.

West of Poland is Germany, and then following west and south from Germany we come to the Netherlands (or Holland), Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal. Luxembourg forms a little triangle between France, Belgium and Germany.

The United Kingdom and Ireland lie even further west across the North Sea and English Channel.

South of Poland are the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which used to form Czechoslovakia, and south again are Austria and Hungary. West of Austria is Switzerland, and sandwiched between the two is tiny Liechtenstein. There are four other tiny European states: Gibraltar at the southern foot of Spain, Andorra in the Pyrenees Mountains between Spain and France, Monaco on the south coast of France and San Marino in north east Italy.

Italy itself lies east of France and south of Switzerland and Austria. Further east, and south of Austria and Hungary lie the countries of the old Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia. South again lies Greece on the Mediterranean, and between Macedonia and the Adriatic Sea lies Albania.

East of the former Yugoslavia and south of Ukraine we find Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova.

The country of Turkey has a small section

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