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203-469: – in Europe  (green & dark grey) – in the European Union  (green)  –  [ Legend ] Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe . It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland , to the west by the sea across from Sweden , to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia . The territory of Estonia consists of

406-566: A Finnic language rather than a variety of Estonian. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries based on the dialects of northern Estonia. During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages , mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation , from the Standard German language. Estonia's oldest written records of

609-874: A client state of the German Empire in the region. However, following Germany's defeat in World War I, the Germans were compelled to transfer power back to the Estonian Provisional Government on 19 November 1918. On 28 November 1918, Soviet Russia invaded , starting the Estonian War of Independence . The Red Army came within 30 km of Tallinn, but in January 1919, the Estonian Army , led by Johan Laidoner , went on

812-586: A crusade to "defend the Christians of Livonia ". Fighting reached Estonia in 1206, when Danish King Valdemar II unsuccessfully invaded Saaremaa . The German Livonian Brothers of the Sword , who had previously subjugated Livonians , Latgalians , and Selonians , started campaigning against the Estonians in 1208, and over the next few years both sides made numerous raids and counter-raids. A major leader of

1015-660: A nationalist movement , encouraging Estonian farmers to take pride in their language and ethnic Estonian identity. The first nationwide movements formed in the 1860s, such as a campaign to establish the Estonian language Alexander School, the founding of the Society of Estonian Literati and the Estonian Students' Society , and the first national song festival , held in 1869 in Tartu. Linguistic reforms helped to develop

1218-611: A referendum was held where 78.4% of voters (including Soviet citizens) supported full independence. During the coup attempt in Moscow , Estonia declared restoration of independence on 20 August 1991. Soviet authorities recognised Estonian independence on 6 September 1991, and on 17 September Estonia was admitted into the United Nations . The last units of the Russian Army left Estonia in 1994. Europe Europe

1421-871: A German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas , as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents. By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning

1624-643: A Semitic term for west , this being either Akkadian erebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician 'ereb 'evening, west', which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav . Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor", while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to

1827-818: A boundary along the Terek and Kuban rivers, so southwards from the Kuma and the Manych, but still with the Caucasus entirely in Asia. However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest, and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps. Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as

2030-455: A broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek , Latin and French . Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item. Article 1 of

2233-639: A brutal siege on Tallinn, however failing to capture it. An Estonian peasant army led by Ivo Schenkenberg was wreaking havoc in Russian rear. By the 1580s, the Polish–Lithuanian and Swedish armies had gone on the offensive and the war ended in 1583 with Russian defeat. As a result of the Livonian War, northern Estonia became Swedish Duchy of Estonia and southern Estonia became Polish Duchy of Livonia . Saaremaa remained under Danish control while Ruhnu

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2436-582: A common currency, the euro , and participate in the European single market and a customs union . A large bloc of countries, the Schengen Area , have also abolished internal border and immigration controls. Regular popular elections take place every five years within the EU; they are considered to be the second-largest democratic elections in the world after India's . The EU is the third-largest economy in

2639-648: A common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system. Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object . The speakers of the two major historical languages spoken in Estonia, North and South Estonian , are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernacular; South Estonian might be

2842-467: A counter-offensive, ejecting Bolshevik forces from Estonia within a few weeks. Renewed Soviet attacks failed, and in the spring of 1919, the Estonian army, in co-operation with White Russian forces, advanced into Russia and Latvia . In June 1919, Estonia defeated the German Landeswehr which had attempted to dominate Latvia, restoring power to the government of Kārlis Ulmanis there. After

3045-467: A critical turning point, where Lithuanian hetman Jan Karol Chodkiewicz led a smaller Polish-Lithuanian force of 2,300 to a decisive victory against a Swedish army of 6,000. Despite this victory and others, the wars stretched on until 1629, concluding with Sweden gaining Livonia , including Southern Estonia and Northern Latvia, altering the power balance in the Baltic region. In addition, Danish Saaremaa

3248-719: A crucial role during the brief period between the Bolshevik retreat and the arrival of German forces . On 23 February 1918 in Pärnu and on 24 February in Tallinn, the committee declared Estonia's independence , forming the Estonian Provisional Government . Shortly thereafter, German occupation commenced, accompanied by an attempt to create the United Baltic Duchy , which aimed to establish

3451-465: A distinctive period of localized governance within the Russian Empire. Serfdom was abolished in 1816–1819, but this initially had little practical effect; major improvements in farmers' rights started with reforms in the mid-19th century. The reopening of the university in Tartu in 1802 gave opportunities for higher education to both Baltic German and a growing number of Estonian students. Among

3654-406: A large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity , but always as a series of rivers, seas and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from

3857-473: A major revolt ejected the Germans and Danes from the whole of Estonia, except Tallinn, but the crusaders soon resumed their offensive, and in 1227, Saaremaa was the last maakond (county) to surrender. After the crusade, the territory of present-day south Estonia and Latvia was named Terra Mariana ; later on it became known simply as Livonia . Northern Estonia became the Danish Duchy of Estonia , while

4060-623: A moderate faction within the independence movement, and the Estonian National Independence Party , which became the first non-communist political party legally registered in the Soviet Union. The parliament of Soviet-controlled Estonia asserted the primacy of Estonian laws with the Sovereignty Declaration on 16 November 1988, inspiring similar declarations across other Soviet republics . On 23 August 1989, approximately two million people formed

4263-544: A mutual-defence pact being signed with Latvia in 1923, and later was followed up with the Baltic Entente of 1934. In the 1930s, Estonia also engaged in secret military co-operation with Finland . Non-aggression pacts were signed with the Soviet Union in 1932, and with Germany in 1939. In 1939, Estonia declared neutrality, but this proved futile in World War II . A week before the outbreak of World War II ,

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4466-430: A new phase of Soviet control over Estonia's economy. Simultaneously, the Soviet Union initiated Russification policies that sought to reshape Estonia's demographics and dilute its cultural identity. Large numbers of ethnic Russians and other Soviet citizens were resettled in Estonia, threatening to turn native Estonians into a minority in their own homeland. Between 1945 and 1989, the proportion of ethnic Estonians in

4669-763: A precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia . Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits , the Black Sea , the Kerch Strait , the Sea of Azov and

4872-711: A residue of Eurocentrism : "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]." During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene , numerous cold phases called glacials ( Quaternary ice age ), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of

5075-685: A result, the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos, and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders. During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively. Eventually

5278-527: A single parish. By the 13th century, Estonia was divided into eight major counties – Harjumaa , Järvamaa , Läänemaa , Revala , Saaremaa , Sakala , Ugandi , and Virumaa – as well as several smaller, single-parish counties. These counties operated as independent entities and only formed loose alliances for defense against foreign threats. Estonia's culture during this period was split into two primary regions. Northern and western coastal areas maintained close connections with Scandinavia and Finland , while

5481-425: A supreme deity worshiped by the islanders of Saaremaa. Sacred groves , particularly those of oak trees, played a significant role in pagan worship practices. Christianity – both Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy – started to be introduced by foreign traders and missionaries since the 10th and 11th century, but most of the population retained their indigenous beliefs. In 1199, Pope Innocent III declared

5684-537: A sweeping land reform expropriating large estates, and adopted a new highly liberal constitution establishing Estonia as a parliamentary democracy. In 1924, the Soviet Union organised a communist coup attempt , which quickly failed. Estonia's cultural-autonomy law for ethnic minorities, adopted in 1925, is widely recognised as one of the most liberal in the world at that time. The Great Depression put heavy pressure on Estonia's political system, and in 1933,

5887-523: A trade intermediary between Novgorod and western Hanseatic cities, while Tartu filled the same role with Pskov . Many artisans' and merchants guilds were formed during the period. Protected by their stone walls and membership in the Hansa, prosperous cities like Tallinn and Tartu often defied other rulers of the medieval Livonian Confederation . The Reformation began in central Europe in 1517, and soon spread northward to Livonia despite some opposition by

6090-743: Is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere . It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa . Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by

6293-401: Is also evidence that Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany) and Isturitz (France). The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and

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6496-734: Is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts. Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language . The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists. In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender , but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative , genitive , partitive , illative , inessive , elative , allative , adessive , ablative , translative , terminative , essive , abessive , and comitative , with

6699-488: Is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well. "Europe", as used specifically in British English , may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively. The term "continent" usually implies the physical geography of

6902-562: Is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of

7105-551: Is one of the least populous members of the European Union and NATO . Estonia has consistently ranked highly in international rankings for quality of life , education , press freedom , digitalisation of public services and the prevalence of technology companies. The name Estonia ( Estonian : Eesti [ˈeˑstʲi] ) has been connected to Aesti , a people first mentioned by Ancient Roman historian Tacitus around 98 CE. Some modern historians believe he

7308-703: Is pronounced [æ], as in English mat . The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/ , unrounded /o/ , or a close-mid back unrounded vowel . It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/ and the Vietnamese ơ , and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы . Additionally C , Q , W , X , and Y are used in writing foreign proper names . They do not occur in Estonian words , and are not officially part of

7511-492: Is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž , they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative , as in Pasha ( pas-ha ); this also applies to some foreign names. Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in

7714-550: Is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE; or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe. During

7917-422: Is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent". The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey

8120-649: Is starkly evident in the archaeological record, with a sharp drop in the number of sites and grave finds, indicating a severe population decline and slow recovery. North Estonian coast was strategically located on the route from the Varangians to the Greeks , making Estonia a trade hub while also being both a target and starting point for many raids. Coastal Estonians, particularly Oeselians from Saaremaa , adopted Viking lifestyle. Several Scandinavian sagas referred to major confrontations with Estonians, notably when in

8323-658: Is the Pulli settlement ; according to radiocarbon dating , it was settled around 11,000 years ago. The earliest human habitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to the Kunda culture . Around 5300 BCE, ceramics appear of the neolithic period, known as Narva culture . This was followed by the Comb Ceramic culture around 3900 BC, bringing early agriculture and sophisticated religious art. Starting from around 2800 BC

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8526-477: Is the largest and most populous , spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population ) in 2021; the third-largest after Asia and Africa. The European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents, such as the Gulf Stream , which produce a temperate climate , tempering winters and summers, on much of

8729-705: The idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus . One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact. South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession. Estonian employs

8932-640: The Baltic Way , a human chain spanning Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to demonstrate unity in pursuit of independence. In 1989, the Estonian Citizens' Committees began registering citizens according to jus sanguinis – those whose citizenship traced back to the pre-war republic. This led to the formation of the Congress of Estonia , a grassroots parliament dedicated to achieving independence through legal continuity and sovereignty. In March 1991,

9135-845: The Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church , as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world . A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam , and limited to northern Iberia ,

9338-452: The Corded Ware culture appeared; this included new activities like primitive farming and animal husbandry. The Comb Ceramic and Corded Ware cultures coexisted in Estonia for a millennium, before eventually blending into a Bronze Age Estonian culture. Archaeological estimates place the population within Estonian territory at a modest level, with approximately 6,000 inhabitants in 3900 BC, rising to around 10,000 by 2000 BC. The Bronze Age saw

9541-414: The Don (ancient Tanais ). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal ), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers. Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and

9744-439: The Estonian Waffen-SS division . Thousands of Estonians escaped to Finland, where many volunteered to fight together with Finns against Soviets . The Red Army reached the Estonian borders again in early 1944, heightening fears of renewed Soviet occupation. The Estonian Self-Administration declared a general mobilization in January, invoking pre-war Estonian legislation, with the support of all major pre-war political parties and

9947-439: The European population at the time. The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews , beggars and lepers . The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until

10150-419: The Finnic branch of the Uralic language family . Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian , and Maltese , Estonian is one of the four official languages of

10353-597: The Forest Brothers , launching an insurgency against Soviet forces. By mid-July, the Forest Brothers' uprising succeeded in liberating South Estonia ahead of the advancing German army, allowing local institutions of the pre-war Republic of Estonia to resume operation. The USSR fully evacuated Tallinn by late August, suffering massive losses in the process, and German forces completed their capture of Estonia's islands by December. Many Estonians were hopeful that Germany would help to restore Estonia's independence, but this proved to be in vain. A puppet Estonian Self-Administration

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10556-594: The Germanic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because Estonian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon ( Middle Low German ) during the period of German rule , and High German (including standard German ). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to

10759-460: The Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games . Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece. The Greek city-state,

10962-400: The Inquisition against heretics. In the Iberian Peninsula , the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492 , ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula. In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to

11165-409: The Iron Curtain , with NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East . This divide ended with the Revolutions of 1989 , the fall of the Berlin Wall , and the dissolution of the Soviet Union , which allowed European integration to advance significantly. European integration is being advanced institutionally since 1948 with the founding of the Council of Europe , and significantly through

11368-442: The Irtysh River , a major tributary of the Ob, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits, and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from

11571-475: The Latin script as the basis for its alphabet . The script adds the letters ä , ö , ü , and õ , plus the later additions š and ž . The letters c , q , w , x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f , z , š , and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä

11774-419: The Mediterranean Sea —namely, Ceuta and Melilla —which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents. The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo , in reference to

11977-490: The Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge , were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe. The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers , descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture; Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago; and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from

12180-427: The Neandertal valley in Germany ) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-day Poland ) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago, with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans ( Cro-Magnons ), who seem to have appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago. However, there

12383-512: The Novgorod Slavs who migrated to the area, expanding westward. Kievan Rus attempted to subjugate Estonia in the 11th century, with Yaroslav the Wise capturing Tartu around 1030. This foothold lasted until 1061 when an Estonian tribe, the Sosols, destroyed it. In 1187, Estonians, Curonians and Karelians sacked Sigtuna , which was a major city of Sweden at the time. In the early centuries AD, Estonia's first political and administrative subdivisions began to take shape. The primary units were

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12586-432: The Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks , caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east. Like many other parts of Eurasia , these territories were overrun by the Mongols . The invaders, who became known as Tatars , were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established

12789-409: The Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago. The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete , the first advanced civilisation in Europe. The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans , who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age . Iron Age colonisation by

12992-416: The Proto-Finnic language , elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan . The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal"). Although Estonian and

13195-401: The Russian Empire under the "Baltic Special Order" ( Balti erikord ). This policy restored the political and landholding rights of the local aristocracy , and recognized Lutheranism as the dominant faith. Estonia was divided into two governorates : the Governorate of Estonia , which included Tallinn and the northern part of Estonia, and the southern Governorate of Livonia , which extended to

13398-406: The Serbian Principality (later Kingdom and Empire ), and the Duchy of Croatia (later Kingdom of Croatia ). To the east, Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state. Further east, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but

13601-413: The Wielbark culture and Dollkeim-Kovrovo cultures. Historical sources identify these people as Goths and Aesti . There is some speculation that the name Estonia may have originated from the Aesti tribes. In the 4th century, Gothic ruler Ermanaric claimed to have subjugated the territories corresponding to Estonia, but there is no archaeological evidence to support this. The Late Antique Little Ice Age

13804-426: The decline of the Roman Empire , Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the " Age of Migrations ". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths , Visigoths , Goths , Vandals , Huns , Franks , Angles , Saxons , Slavs , Avars , Bulgars , Vikings , Pechenegs , Cumans , and Magyars . Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as

14007-465: The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Christian consolidation of Europe in the wake of the Migration Period marked the European post-classical Middle Ages . The Italian Renaissance spread in the continent a new humanist interest in art and science which led to the modern era . Since the Age of Discovery , led by Spain and Portugal , Europe played a predominant role in global affairs with multiple explorations and conquests around

14210-424: The interwar period , Estonia declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II , however the country was repeatedly contested, invaded, and occupied ; first by the Soviet Union in 1940 , then Nazi Germany in 1941, and ultimately reoccupied in 1944 by, and annexed into, the USSR as an administrative subunit ( Estonian SSR ). Throughout the 1944–91 Soviet occupation, Estonia's de jure state continuity

14413-432: The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called the Holocene . Homo erectus georgicus , which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia , is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe. Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca , Spain . Neanderthal man (named after

14616-608: The mainland , the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa , and over 2,300 other islands and islets on the east coast of the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of 45,335 square kilometres (17,504 sq mi). Tallinn , the capital city , and Tartu are the two largest urban areas . The Estonian language is the official language and the first language of the majority of the population of 1.4 million. Present-day Estonia has been inhabited by humans since at least 9,000 BCE. The medieval indigenous population of Estonia

14819-569: The polis , was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece. In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens . The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy , humanism and rationalism under Aristotle , Socrates and Plato ; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides ; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with

15022-520: The secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact assigned Estonia to the Soviet Union 's sphere of influence. On 24 September 1939, Joseph Stalin presented the Estonian government an ultimatum. The Estonian government decided to avoid military conflict, and a " mutual assistance treaty " was signed on 28 September 1939, allowing the USSR to establish military bases in Estonia. On 14 June 1940

15225-767: The watershed of the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , the Caspian Sea , the Greater Caucasus , the Black Sea , and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait . Europe covers about 10.18 million km (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model ). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states , of which Russia

15428-521: The "Dark Ages". Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this, very few written records survive. Much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire. While the Roman empire in

15631-587: The 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000. The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert , and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 , during the Fourth Crusade . Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire . In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as

15834-677: The 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480, and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia . The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible , steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries. The Great Famine of 1315–1317

16037-760: The 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of art , philosophy , music , and the sciences , under the joint patronage of royalty , the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class. Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome , funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael , Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci . Estonian language Estonian belongs to

16240-573: The 16th century, the expansionist monarchies of Muscovy , Sweden, and Poland–Lithuania consolidated power, posing a growing threat to decentralised Livonia weakened by disputes between cities, nobility, bishops, and the Order. In 1558, Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia (Muscovy) invaded Livonia, starting the Livonian War . The Livonian Order was decisively defeated in 1560. The majority of Livonia accepted Polish–Lithuanian rule, while Tallinn and

16443-485: The 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo ( Urschöpfung ); i.e. they created new words out of nothing. The most well-known reformer of Estonian, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of

16646-499: The 18th century. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe. The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence , and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often translated from Arabic into Latin . The Renaissance spread across Europe between

16849-926: The 1930s. There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs , 28 of which are native to Estonian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back , close back , or close-mid central . Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g : pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [ gen sg ] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ ptv sg ]'. Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž ,

17052-605: The 1940 Soviet annexation. In 1980, Tallinn hosted the sailing events for the Moscow Olympics , an occasion that triggered international boycotts in protest of both the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the occupation of the Baltic states. Though the Olympics brought economic investments to Tallinn, many Estonian exiles and Western nations condemned the events held on occupied soil. The introduction of perestroika by

17255-547: The 1960s, however, some Estonians living in the northern regions covertly began watching Finnish television broadcasts, offering glimpses into life outside the Iron Curtain . Soviet security forces in Estonia enjoyed vast powers to suppress dissent, but despite harsh repression, underground resistance endured. In the late 1970s, Moscow's ideological pressure intensified with a new wave of Russian immigration, and Karl Vaino , an official from Moscow who barely spoke Estonian,

17458-529: The 1960s. The Soviet regime also intensified its policy of collectivisation , forcing Estonian farmers to abandon private agriculture and join state-run collectives. When locals resisted, authorities launched a campaign of terror, culminating in March 1949 with operation Priboi – the mass deportation of around 20,000 Estonians to the gulag system in Siberia. Full collectivization followed shortly after, marking

17661-524: The 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language University of Dorpat , is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered

17864-407: The 19th century, Russification began, as the central government initiated various administrative and cultural measures to tie Baltic governorates more closely to the empire. The Russian language replaced German and Estonian in most secondary schools and universities, and many social and cultural activities in local languages were suppressed. In the late 1890s, there was a new surge of nationalism with

18067-490: The 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ex nihilo are in common use today. Examples are * ese 'object', * kolp 'skull', * liibuma 'to cling', * naasma 'to return, come back', * nõme 'stupid, dull'. Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian , German , French , Finnish , English and Swedish . Aavik had

18270-582: The 20th century and the indigenous Setos were converted to Eastern Orthodoxy . Initially, the Estonian nobles who accepted baptism were able to retain their power and influence by becoming vassals of the Danish king or the church; they intermarried with newcomer Crusader familiers and over the centuries become Germanised , leading to the ethnogenesis of the Baltic Germans . The Estonian pagans rose several times against foreign Christian rule. During

18473-400: The 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens , the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation. Greece was followed by Rome , which left its mark on law , politics , language , engineering , architecture , government , and many more key aspects in western civilisation. By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over

18676-537: The British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance : Europa often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin . The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in

18879-569: The Collegium Derpatense in Tartu, where Estonian-language catechisms were published to support local missions. Despite the Jesuits' efforts, including extensive publishing and education initiatives, their presence in Tartu was cut short by Swedish conquest in the early 17th century. The Polish–Swedish War , which began in 1600, unleashed years of further devastation across Estonia. The Battle of Weissenstein ( Paide ) in 1604 marked

19082-448: The Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers". In Russia and the Soviet Union , the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906. In 1958,

19285-603: The Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe. A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament . The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church . Through monasteries and cathedral schools , the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe. The Papacy reached

19488-559: The East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies. The question of defining

19691-400: The Estonian language. The national epic Kalevipoeg was published in 1857, and 1870 saw the first performances of Estonian theatre . In 1878 a major split happened in the national movement. The moderate wing led by Hurt focused on development of culture and Estonian education, while the radical wing led by Jakobson started demanding increased political and economical rights. At the end of

19894-529: The Estonian resistance was Lembitu , an elder of Sakala County , but in 1217 the Estonians suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of St. Matthew's Day , where Lembitu was killed. In 1219, Valdemar II landed at Lindanise , defeated the Estonians in the Battle of Lyndanisse , and started conquering Northern Estonia. The next year, Sweden invaded Western Estonia, but were repelled by the Oeselians. In 1223,

20097-546: The Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century. When the Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II , in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke

20300-463: The European Union that are not Indo-European languages . In terms of linguistic morphology , Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language . The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional , especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is

20503-535: The Finnic languages date from the 13th century. The "Originates Livoniae" in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences. The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in Estonian was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached

20706-707: The Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I . Charlemagne , a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed " Holy Roman Emperor " by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire , which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe. East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and

20909-468: The Great 's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe. Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents. The mapmakers continued to differ on

21112-655: The Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor . In the mid-7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Persia , Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region. Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus , Malta , Crete , Sicily , and parts of southern Italy . Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia were brought under Muslim rule—save for small areas in

21315-689: The Livonian Order. Protestant preaching began actively in Tallinn in 1524, leading the town council to align with the Reformation by the following year. Similar events unfolded in Tartu, where tensions arose with Catholic Bishop Johann Blankenfeld, resulting in iconoclastic riots that damaged Catholic churches and monasteries in both cities. By the late 1520s, most Estonian towns had embraced the Reformation, although Catholic influence remained stronger in Viljandi, Haapsalu , and Vana-Pärnu. Unlike

21518-703: The Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly-joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean . In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which

21721-527: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols which had led to Estonia's loss of independence. Although direct demands for independence were not yet made, organizers aimed to reinforce the continuity of the Estonian state and prepare the foundation for a restoration based on legal principles. In 1988, new political movements emerged, including the Popular Front of Estonia , representing

21924-743: The Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay , on the Kara Sea , along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills , and then the Emba River ; and Kuma–Manych Depression, thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe. The Flora Europaea adopted

22127-475: The Soviet Union instituted a full naval and air blockade on Estonia, shooting down the airliner Kaleva . On 16 June, the USSR presented another ultimatum demanding free passage of the Red Army into Estonia and the establishment of a pro-Soviet government. Feeling that resistance was hopeless, the Estonian government complied and, on the next day, the whole country was occupied. The Independent Signal Battalion

22330-567: The Soviet Union on 22 June, the Summer War began in Estonia. The Soviet authorities forcibly conscripted around 34,000 young Estonian men into the Red Army; fewer than 30% would survive the war. Soviet extermination battalions adopted a scorched-earth policy , massacring many civilians in the process, and NKVD units executed political prisoners who could not be evacuated. Thousands of Estonians joined anti-Soviet partisan groups known as

22533-670: The Soviet Union transferred border areas comprising about 5% of Estonian pre-war territory from the Estonian SSR to the Russian SFSR . Following the renewed Soviet occupation of Estonia, thousands of Estonians once again joined the Forest Brothers to resist Soviet rule. This armed resistance was particularly intense in the immediate post-war years, but Soviet forces eventually wore it down through relentless attrition tactics, bringing an end to organized armed resistance by

22736-536: The Soviet Union, maintaining that it was illegal under international law. Legal continuity of the Estonian state was preserved through the government-in-exile and the Estonian diplomatic representatives which Western governments continued to recognise. This stance drew support from the Stimson Doctrine , which denied recognition of territorial changes enacted through force, and appeared on USA-made maps, which carried disclaimers affirming non-recognition of

22939-729: The Soviet forces launched several major offensives , compelling German troops to withdraw from mainland Estonia in September and from the Estonian islands in November. During this retreat, Jüri Uluots appointed a government led by Otto Tief in a final effort to restore Estonian independence. Facing a second Soviet occupation, tens of thousands of Estonians fled westward. Overall, Estonia lost about 25% of its population through deaths, deportations and evacuations in World War II. Estonia also suffered some irrevocable territorial losses, as

23142-662: The Soviet government in 1987 reopened the possibility for political activism in Estonia, sparking the Singing Revolution , a peaceful movement towards independence. One of the first major acts of resistance was the Phosphorite War , an environmental protest against Soviet plans to establish large phosphate mines in Virumaa . On 23 August 1987, the Hirvepark meeting in Tallinn called for the public disclosure of

23345-516: The Swedish era from the harsher Russian rule that followed. Despite the initial Swedish success in the victorious Battle of Narva , Russia conquered the whole of Estonia by the end of 1710. The war again devastated the population of Estonia, with the 1712 population estimated at only 150,000–170,000. Under the terms of the Capitulation of Estonia and Livonia , the country was incorporated into

23548-509: The Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary. The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire , the culture that developed in its place , linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe". The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in

23751-551: The adoption of Christianity ( c. 1000 CE) . The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia . Further south, the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity : the First Bulgarian Empire ,

23954-410: The alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters: Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme , there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t

24157-648: The basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control. From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequent Byzantine–Sasanian wars , the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking

24360-435: The boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk , while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified c.  1773 by

24563-421: The burning of traditional costumes. While large parts of the rural population remained in serfdom during the Swedish rule, legal reforms under King Charles XI strengthened both serfs' and free tenant farmers' land usage and inheritance rights – hence this period got the reputation of "The Good Old Swedish Time" in historical memory. Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus established gymnasiums in Tallinn and Tartu;

24766-413: The case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to

24969-461: The cities, rural areas were slower to adopt Protestantism, with Catholic influence persisting among local nobility and peasants well into the 1530s. With the Reformation, church services began to be conducted in vernacular language, which initially meant Low German , but already from the 1530s onward the regular religious services were held in Estonian. Early Estonian-language Protestant texts emerged, including Wanradt–Koell Catechism in 1535. During

25172-416: The collapse of the White Russian forces, the Red Army launched a major offensive against Narva in late 1919, but failed to achieve a breakthrough. On 2 February 1920, the Tartu Peace Treaty was signed by Estonia and Soviet Russia, with the latter pledging to permanently give up all sovereign claims to Estonia. In April 1919, the Estonian Constituent Assembly was elected. The Constituent Assembly passed

25375-441: The conflict, solidifying Ivan's reputation as a brutal oppressor. This did not stop Magnus, Duke of Holstein from playing a controversial role marked by shifting allegiances and aspirations for power. On June 10, 1570, he arrived in Moscow and was crowned King of Livonia by Ivan, pledging allegiance to the Russian Tsar as his overlord. Põltsamaa became the capital of his short-lived Kingdom of Livonia . Ivan and Magnus twice laid

25578-519: The constitutional Prime Minister in the duties of the President , Jüri Uluots . The mobilisation drew wide support among Estonians, while the 38,000 men who were drafted became part of the Waffen-SS . With significant support from Estonian units, German forces managed to halt the Soviet advance for six months in fierce battles near Narva . In March, the Soviet Air Force launched extensive bombing raids on Tallinn and other Estonian cities, resulting in severe damage and loss of life. From July to September,

25781-400: The continent The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains , the Ural River , and the Caspian Sea ; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains , the Black Sea , and

25984-453: The continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu ( 歐洲 / 欧洲 ), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu ( 歐羅巴洲 ) ( zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū ( 欧州 ) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō ( 欧州連合 ) , despite the katakana Yōroppa ( ヨーロッパ ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages,

26187-424: The continent. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable producing more continental climates . European culture consists of a range of national and regional cultures, which form the central roots of the wider Western civilisation , and together commonly reference ancient Greece and ancient Rome , particularly through their Christian successors , as crucial and shared roots. Beginning with

26390-424: The continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar , separating it from Northwest Africa , to the Don, separating it from Asia. The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius , Strabo , and Ptolemy , who took

26593-459: The country dropped from 97% to 62%. Occupying authorities carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing, mass deportation of indigenous populations, and mass colonization by Russian settlers which led to Estonia losing 3% of its native population. The Soviet regime seized all industry and centralized agriculture, emphasizing heavy industrial development that often neglected local well-being and caused significant environmental damage. The military presence

26796-412: The decades following initial Christianization, there were several uprisings against the Teutonic rulers in Saaremaa. In 1343, a major uprising encompassed North Estonia and Saaremaa. The Teutonic Order suppressed the rebellion by 1345, and in 1346 the Danish king sold his possessions in Estonia to the Order. The unsuccessful rebellion led to a consolidation of power for the upper-class German minority. For

26999-402: The development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas . The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene. The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in

27202-456: The early 7th century "Estonian Vikings" defeated and killed Ingvar Harra , the King of Swedes . The Salme ship burials dating from mid-8th century have been suggested as a possible starting point for the Viking Age in Europe. In the East Slavic sources, Estonians and other closely related Finnic tribes were known as Chuds . In 862, Chuds participated in the founding of the Rurik dynasty in Novgorod , gradually losing their influence to

27405-466: The end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world. Both world wars began and were fought to a great extent in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence and competed over dominance in Europe and globally. The resulting Cold War divided Europe along

27608-422: The end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first- and second-generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted Estonian (over 50% as of the 2022 census). The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in

27811-402: The epic poems of Homer ; in drama with Sophocles and Euripides ; in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen ; and in science with Pythagoras , Euclid , and Archimedes . In the course of the 5th century BCE, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars , considered a pivotal moment in world history, as

28014-420: The establishment of the first hill fort settlements. The Seima-Turbino phenomenon brought the first bronze artefacts to the region and is often connected to the development of the Finno-Ugric languages . A transition from hunter-fisher subsistence to single-farm-based settlement started around 1000 BC, and was complete by the beginning of the Iron Age around 500 BC. The large amount of bronze objects indicate

28217-553: The existence of active communication with Scandinavian and Germanic tribes. By the end of the Bronze Age, domestic manufacture of bronze artefacts began. In the Iron Age , population grew. Local production of iron started approximately in 200 BC. During the first centuries CE, North Estonia, particularly the coastal region of Virumaa , emerged as a cultural hub. This period saw an influx of North Estonian settlers into sparsely populated Baltic Sea region. This cultural and linguistic expansion originating from North Estonia gave also rise to

28420-460: The first newspapers in the Estonian language. They also began to value and collect the Estonian folklore , including surviving pre-Christian myths and traditions. Another sign of a rising Estonian national consciousness was a mass movement in South Estonia to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy in the 1840s, following a famine and a promise for being rewarded with land. By the 1850s, several leading figures were promoting an Estonian national identity among

28623-410: The following two centuries it conquered Greece , Hispania ( Spain and Portugal ), the North African coast, much of the Middle East , Gaul ( France and Belgium ), and Britannia ( England and Wales ). Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean basin and Western Europe by the turn of

28826-535: The founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language: In English: In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published. In modern times A. H. Tammsaare , Jaan Kross , and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia 's best-known and most translated writers. Estonians lead

29029-523: The general populace. Widespread farm buyouts by Estonians and the resulting rapidly growing class of land-owning farmers provided the economic basis for the political affirmation of the Estonian identity. In 1857, Johann Voldemar Jannsen started publishing one of the first successful circulating Estonian-language weekly newspapers, Perno Postimees , and began popularising the denomination of oneself as eestlane (Estonian). Schoolmaster Carl Robert Jakobson and clergyman Jakob Hurt became leading figures in

29232-400: The height of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land . In Europe itself, the Church organised

29435-399: The idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia. Four years later, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along the Volga , following the Volga north until the Samara Bend , along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers ), then north and east along

29638-551: The inland south had stronger ties to the Balts and the principality of Pskov . The Estonian landscape was dotted with numerous hill forts, and evidence of ancient harbor sites has been found along the coast of Saaremaa. During the Viking Age, Estonia was a region of active trade, with exports such as iron, furs, and honey. Imports included fine goods like silk, jewelry, glass, and Ulfberht swords . Estonian burial sites from this era often contain both individual and collective graves, with artifacts such as weapons and jewelry that reflect

29841-447: The interwar period. Land reforms improved the farmers' conditions, but the country also prospered from industrialisation and the development of oil shale mining. With the independence, most economic links with Russia were severed, but trade was rapidly reoriented towards markets in the West. Estonia joined the League of Nations in 1921. Attempts to establish a larger alliance together with Finland , Poland , and Latvia failed, with only

30044-403: The language. When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of Estonian effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools

30247-422: The latter was upgraded to Tartu University in 1632. Printing presses were also established in both towns. The beginnings of the Estonian public education system appeared in the 1680s, largely due to efforts of Bengt Forselius , who also introduced orthographical reforms to written Estonian. The population of Estonia grew rapidly until the Great Famine of 1695–97 in which 70,000–75,000 people died – about 20% of

30450-532: The latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains . At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers. This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire , writing in 1760 about Peter

30653-442: The latter were first public proponents of Estonian nationalism , such as young poet Kristjan Jaak Peterson . At the same time, the nationalist ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder greatly influenced the Baltic German intelligentsia to see the value in the native Estonian culture. The resulting Estophile movement gave rise to the Learned Estonian Society and other scientific societies, supported Estonian-language education and founded

30856-418: The local nobility. From 1783 to 1796, the administrative structure shifted temporarily under Empress Catherine II 's "Governorate System," aiming to centralize governance and bring the Baltic regions closer to imperial norms; however, this system was repealed, and the Baltic Special Order was restored under Emperor Paul I . This Baltic Special Order remained largely in effect until the late 19th century, marking

31059-464: The millennium. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire . The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana , a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe. The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius , who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic , Pictish and Scottish tribes. Christianity

31262-410: The neighboring Finnish language and continued until the early 2nd millennium AD when the encroachment of Baltic and Slavic tribes limited the reach of Finnic cultures. Commercial contacts in the Baltic Sea region grew and extended. During this period, North Estonia developed increasingly robust connections with the southern and southeastern Baltic Sea regions, particularly with tribes associated with

31465-539: The nobles of northern Estonia swore loyalty to the Swedish king, and the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek sold his lands to the Danish king. Tsar Ivan's forces were at first able to conquer the larger part of Livonia. Epidemics of plague swept through the territory, compounding the destruction. Estonian peasants, growing increasingly resentful of local authorities’ failure to protect them from Russian raids, erupted in uprisings in 1560, besieging Koluvere Castle in Läänemaa . The rebellion saw Estonians briefly elect their own king before it

31668-407: The northern part of Latvia. The rights of local farmers reached their lowest point, as serfdom completely dominated agricultural relations during the 18th century. Despite occasional attempts by the Russian central government to align Estonian governance with broader imperial standards, the autonomy of the Baltic provinces generally remained intact, as the tsarist regime sought to avoid conflicts with

31871-441: The northwest ( Asturias ) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees . This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus , became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate . The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In

32074-431: The originally Persian name Frangistan ("land of the Franks ") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa . Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries Key: blue : states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia ; green : countries not geographically in Europe, but closely associated with

32277-440: The parish (Estonian: kihelkond ) and the county (Estonian: maakond ), the latter composed of multiple parishes. Each parish was typically governed by local nobles referred to as kings (Estonian: kuningas ). Ancient Estonia had a professional warrior caste while the nobles' wealth and prestige was based on international trade. The parishes were commonly centered around hill forts, though occasionally multiple forts existed within

32480-444: The poetry devoted to it. An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes , who has argued in favour of a pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia . There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to

32683-406: The population. During the Great Northern War , Peter the Great of Russia launched another invasion of Estonia in 1700. By the time of the Great Northern War, many Estonians were loyal to the Swedish crown, with up to 20,000 fighting to defend Estonia against Russian invasion. Stories of the Swedish king Charles XII , who was revered in Estonian folk memory, embody a sentiment that distinguished

32886-592: The reader and was destroyed immediately after publication. The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.   Wanradt and J.   Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into the variety of South Estonian called Võro in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on Northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle . Writings in Estonian became more significant in

33089-417: The realisation of the European Union (EU), which represents today the majority of Europe. The European Union is a supranational political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation and is based on a system of European treaties . The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted

33292-456: The remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias , Leon , and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. As

33495-519: The rest was divided between the Sword Brothers and prince-bishoprics of Dorpat and Ösel–Wiek . In 1236, after suffering a major defeat , the Sword Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order becoming the Livonian Order . The eastern border with the Novgorod Republic was fixed after the Battle on the Ice took place on Lake Peipus in 1242, where the combined armies of the Livonian Order and Estonian infantry were defeated by Novgorod. The southeastern region of Setomaa remained under Russian rule until

33698-414: The right-wing Vaps movement spearheaded a constitutional reform establishing a strong presidency. On 12 March 1934 the acting head of state, Konstantin Päts , extended a state of emergency over the entire country, under the pretext that the Vaps movement had been planning a coup. Päts went on to rule by decree for several years, while the parliament did not reconvene (" era of silence "). A new constitution

33901-417: The rise of prominent figures like Jaan Tõnisson and Konstantin Päts . In the early 20th century, Estonians started taking over control of local governments in towns from Germans. Nationalist poets such as Juhan Liiv began openly calling for the establishment of an independent Estonian state. During the 1905 Revolution , the first legal Estonian political parties were founded. An Estonian national congress

34104-492: The second half of the 19th   century based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17th   century by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into

34307-471: The shared material culture of Scandinavia and Northern Europe. The spiritual and religious beliefs of medieval Estonians before their Christianization remain a topic of historical interest and debate. Estonian spirituality was deeply rooted in animistic traditions, with shamans ( nõid ) and fortunetellers known abroad, as noted by sources like Adam of Bremen and the Novgorod First Chronicle . The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia mentions Tharapita as

34510-419: The sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k , with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology. Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated. ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/. While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony , central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language

34713-405: The south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian . The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County , the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa , Hiiumaa , Muhu and Kihnu , and

34916-422: The state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries. After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia . Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans. From

35119-449: The subsequent centuries Low German remained the language of the ruling elite in both Estonian cities and the countryside. Tallinn , the capital of Danish Estonia founded on the site of Lindanise, adopted the Lübeck law and received full town rights in 1248. The Hanseatic League controlled trade on the Baltic Sea, and overall the four largest cities in Estonia became members: Tallinn, Tartu , Pärnu , and Viljandi . Tallinn acted as

35322-407: The turmoil of war, ideas for establishing an Estonian national army began to take root, while the shortages and hardships on the home front led to civil unrest. Despite repeated appeals and promises, the Russian imperial government resisted expanding Estonian political rights. In 1917, following the February Revolution , the Russian Provisional Government finally conceded to Estonian demands. Estonia

35525-407: The waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea . Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America , although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus

35728-514: The wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'. Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from

35931-445: The west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures , burial mounds and megalithic tombs . The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic . During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as

36134-416: The west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire , also known as the Byzantine Empire . During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms

36337-399: The western shore of the Aegean Sea . As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus . Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia ) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. Herodotus mentioned that

36540-419: The widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans , probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East . It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine ( Linear Pottery culture ), and along the Mediterranean coast ( Cardial culture ). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to

36743-411: The world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa)—with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don , rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don. The Book of Jubilees described

36946-416: The world in book ownership, owning on average 218 books per house, and 35% of Estonians owning 350 books or more (as of 2018). Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment , during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves,

37149-410: The world. The place name Evros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which bears the same name today. The principal river there – Evros (today's Maritsa ) – flows through the fertile valleys of Thrace , which itself was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent. In classical Greek mythology , Europa ( Ancient Greek : Εὐρώπη , Eurṓpē )

37352-452: The world. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers colonised at various times the Americas , almost all of Africa and Oceania , and the majority of Asia. The Age of Enlightenment , the French Revolution , and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically, and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution , which began in Great Britain at

37555-412: Was granted autonomy , and the Estonian Provincial Assembly was formed through democratic elections. In addition, the territory of autonomous Estonia was expanded to include the Estonian-speaking areas of Livonia. In November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Estonia, declaring the Provincial Assembly disbanded. In response, the Assembly established the Estonian Salvation Committee , which played

37758-422: Was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution . Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul ) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE, and in 391–392 CE the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions. This

37961-420: Was preserved by diplomatic representatives and the government-in-exile . Following the 1988–90 bloodless Estonian " Singing Revolution " against Soviet rule, the nation's full independence was restored on 20 August 1991 . Estonia is a developed country with a high-income advanced economy . It is a democratic unitary parliamentary republic , administratively subdivided into 15 maakond (counties) . It

38164-590: Was transferred to Sweden in 1645. During the Russo-Swedish War , Russia in 1656 captured eastern parts of Estonia, including Tartu, holding it until the Treaty of Cardis was concluded in 1661. The wars had halved the population of Estonia from about 250–270,000 people in the mid 16th century to 115–120,000 in the 1630s. The Swedish era in Estonia was complex, marked by both cultural repression and significant reforms. Initially, Swedish rule brought Protestant puritans who opposed traditional Estonian beliefs and practices, leading to witch trials , bans on folk music, and

38367-399: Was a Phoenician princess. One view is that her name derives from the Ancient Greek elements εὐρύς ( eurús ) 'wide, broad', and ὤψ ( ōps , gen. ὠπός , ōpós ) 'eye, face, countenance', hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean 'wide-gazing' or 'broad of aspect'. Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and

38570-419: Was adopted in a 1937 referendum, and in 1938 a new bicameral parliament was elected in a popular vote, where both pro-government and opposition candidates participated. The Päts régime was relatively benign compared to other authoritarian régimes in interwar Europe, and the régime never used violence against political opponents. In spite of political complications, Estonia enjoyed rapid economic growth during

38773-503: Was appointed head of the Communist Party of Estonia . The Communist Party of Estonia , now dominated by ethnic Russians, acted as a mechanism for this demographic shift. Estonian dissidents, responding to this escalating Russification, grew increasingly vocal, with notable protests such as the Baltic Appeal to the United Nations in 1979, and the Letter of 40 intellectuals in 1980, which openly criticized Soviet policies. Most Western nations refused to recognize Estonia's annexation by

38976-421: Was convened and demanded the unification of Estonian areas into a single autonomous territory and an end to Russification. The unrest was accompanied by both peaceful political demonstrations and violent riots with looting in the commercial district of Tallinn and in a number of wealthy landowners' manors in the Estonian countryside. The flag of Estonia , adopted by the Estonian Students' Society since 1881,

39179-411: Was established, and occupied Estonia was merged into Reichskommissariat Ostland , with its economy being subjugated to German military needs. About a thousand Estonian Jews were killed in 1941 and numerous forced labour camps were established. German occupation authorities started recruiting men into volunteer units and limited conscription was instituted in 1943, eventually leading to formation of

39382-428: Was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later. The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages , followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500. During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century . Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible

39585-477: Was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of Estonian by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence , Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Since 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, Estonian is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU . The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at

39788-471: Was one of the last pagan civilisations in Europe to adopt Christianity following the Northern Crusades in the 13th century. After centuries of successive rule by the Teutonic Order , Denmark , Sweden , and the Russian Empire , a distinct Estonian national identity began to reemerge in the mid-19th century. This culminated in the 1918 Estonian Declaration of Independence from the then-warring Russian and German empires. Democratic throughout most of

39991-461: Was part of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia . During Polish rule in South Estonia, efforts were made to restore Catholicism, yet this was distinct from traditional Counter-Reformation actions, as Poland–Lithuania fostered religious tolerance. In 1582, the Livonian Constitutions re-established Livonia as a Catholic bishopric, marking a turning point in religious influence in the region. Jesuit influence flourished, establishing institutions such as

40194-469: Was pervasive, with closed military zones occupying 2% of the country, while entry into coastal areas required special permits, rendering Estonia partially isolated from the outside world. Estonians faced additional hardships, as thousands were forcibly conscripted into Soviet conflicts, including the Soviet–Afghan War and the Chernobyl disaster cleanup. Despite the proximity to Finland, Estonia's standard of living under Soviet rule lagged substantially. Since

40397-503: Was prominently featured during these demonstrations. In December 1905, the first attempt to declare Estonia an independent country took place in the village of Vaali, Järvamaa . The Tsarist government responded with a brutal crackdown; some 500 people were executed and hundreds more jailed or deported to Siberia. During World War I , over 100,000 Estonian men were mobilized into the Imperial Russian Army . Of these, approximately 8,000 to 10,000 perished, and one in five suffered injuries. In

40600-446: Was referring to Balts , while others have proposed that the name then applied to the whole eastern Baltic Sea region. Scandinavian sagas and Viking runestones referring to Eistland are the earliest known sources that definitely use the name in its modern geographic meaning. From Old Norse the toponym spread to other Germanic vernaculars and reached literary Latin by the end of 12th century. The oldest known settlement in Estonia

40803-495: Was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages. The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half. Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines, and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period. Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death , one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of

41006-444: Was the only unit of the Estonian Army to offer armed resistance to occupation. On 6 August 1940, Estonia was formally annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR . The USSR established a repressive wartime regime in occupied Estonia, targeting the country's elite for arrest. Soviet repression escalated on 14 June 1941, when approximately 11,000 Estonians were deported to Russia . When Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against

41209-401: Was ultimately suppressed. Reports of Russian atrocities against Livonians, led by Ivan the Terrible and his forces, spread widely in Europe. Chroniclers of the era, though diverse in origin and political stance, depicted Ivan and his armies as barbaric and tyrannical, emphasizing the suffering of local populations under Muscovite occupation. These accounts helped to shape European perceptions of

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