Seeking free elevation data for Europe?
The 3-arc second (~90 meter) SRTM covers all of Europe to 60° N, has good positional accuracy and is part of the public domain. CGIAR provides an interface for easily downloading the data tiles, which are provided in both ASCII and GeoTIFF formats.
Country specified sites:
For Finland there is https://tiedostopalvelu.maanmittauslaitos.fi/tp/kartta it uses CC 4.0 License. Select korkeusmalli (elevation modell) (2m and 5m), or laserkeilusaineisto (LAS data)
Elevation can be extracted (x,y,z values) from
ETOPO1 is a 1 arc-minute global relief model of Earth's surface that integrates land topography and ocean bathymetry. It was built from numerous global and regional data sets, and is available in "Ice Surface" (top of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) and "Bedrock" (base of the ice sheets) versions. Historic ETOPO2v2 and ETOPO5 global relief grids are deprecated but still available.
Grid/node-registered: cells are centered on lines of latitude and longitude (21601 by 10801 cells). Cell/pixel-registered: cell edges are along lines of latitude and longitude (21600 by 10800 cells).
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/global.html
ETOPO1 Ice Surface: grid-registered: netCDF, GRD98, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff cell-registered: netCDF, GRD98, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff ETOPO1 Bedrock: grid-registered: netCDF, GRD98, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff cell-registered: netCDF, GRD98, binary*, xyz, georeferenced tiff
* ArcGIS users - use binary and convert using 'Float to Raster' Custom Grids
Online: Custom regional grids can be created online from ETOPO1 using NGDC's Grid Translator; Desktop/Offline: For both cell-centered and grid-centered downloaded grids, custom grids with user-defined bounds can be created in multiple formats, using the desktop version of Grid Translator, part of the free GEODAS Windows Software for Online Downloads and GEODAS XWindows Software.
How to Cite ETOPO1:
Amante, C. and B. W. Eakins, ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global Relief Model: Procedures, Data Sources and Analysis. NOAA Technical Memorandum NESDIS NGDC-24, 19 pp, March 2009.
FTP Site: ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/relief/ETOPO1/data/ice_surface/grid_registered/binary/ Big Files! for download [contains x,y,z values]
Since 2013 there is the EU-DEM 25 m: new Digital Surface Model (DSM), representing the first surface as illuminated by the sensors. You can download the GeoTIFF files here: http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/eu-dem#tab-gis-data
In 2014/2015 there will be the release of the worldwide SRTM 30m data as announced here: https://www1.nga.mil/MediaRoom/LeadingStories/Pages/NGAreleaseshigh-resolutionelevationdatatopublic.aspx (in April 2015 the European tiles - source)