48 Fun Facts About Estonia

Estonian belongs to which language family?

Estonian is a Finnic language of the Uralic family; unlike Latvian and Lithuanian it is not Indo-European at all, and it has 14 noun cases.

Estonia restored its independence in August 1991 during which Moscow crisis?

A coup attempt. Hardliners had moved against Gorbachev, and Soviet armoured columns were already moving on Tallinn when parliament voted; within three weeks the Soviet Union had recognised Estonia's independence.

The peaceful 1988-90 movement toward Estonian independence is known as what?

The Singing Revolution. Under Soviet rule choirs had kept national feeling alive, singing 'My Fatherland Is My Love' in place of the banned anthem, and in 1988 mass singing turned into open protest.

What was the 1989 human chain of two million across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called?

The Baltic Way. On 23 August 1989 about two million people joined hands in a line from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius, and Moscow answered within days with a furious rebuke.

The 1989 human chain through Estonia marked 50 years since which pact?

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Days before the anniversary a Soviet commission at last admitted that the pact's secret protocols, which had handed Estonia and its neighbours to Stalin, were real.

Which country's army marched into Tallinn a day after Estonia declared independence in 1918?

Germany. The declaration came in the brief gap between the Bolshevik retreat and the German arrival, and independence became real only after a war of more than a year against Bolshevik and local German forces alike.

In its 2005 local elections, Estonia became the first country to do what?

Allow binding internet voting nationwide. Voters logged in with their chip-bearing national ID cards during the advance-voting days, and anyone who preferred could still go to a polling station on election day.

Estonia's e-residency gives foreigners no right to live there; what does it let them do?

Run an Estonian company. Holders get a state-issued digital identity for signing documents online from anywhere, a scheme aimed at entrepreneurs whose work is not tied to one place.

Which internet calling service, launched in 2003, was built by a team of Estonian programmers?

Skype. Its software was written in Estonia for two Scandinavian founders; Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for it in 2011 and retired the service in 2025.

Which currency did Estonia give up when it adopted the euro in 2011?

Kroon. Estonians had swapped their Soviet roubles for it in June 1992, and its fixed peg to the Deutschmark soon brought runaway inflation down.

Estonia's flag is a horizontal tricolour of blue, white and which third colour?

The third stripe is black: the blue-black-white tricolour was adopted by the Vironia student society in 1881, and the Soviet regime later banned it outright.

Estonia's highest point, Suur Munamägi, reaches roughly what height above sea level?

300 m. Suur Munamägi reaches just 318 metres, yet nothing in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania stands higher, in a country so low-lying that its average elevation is about 50 metres.

Roughly how many islands and islets lie off the coast of Estonia?

2,000 is the round figure: published counts run from about 1,500 to more than 2,300, depending on how small a rock is allowed to count as an island.

The Kaali crater field on Saaremaa was formed by what?

A meteorite impact. The rock broke up in the air and struck an island that was already inhabited, a blast since likened to an atomic bomb; the largest of its nine craters is 110 m across.

The Estonian Song Festival, first held in 1869, takes place how often?

Every five years. The first festival, at Tartu in 1869, drew fewer than 900 performers, all in men's choirs and brass bands; its modern successors have drawn about 100,000 performers and spectators at a time.

Which Estonian composer invented the minimalist tintinnabuli style?

Arvo Pärt. He devised the bell-like style in 1976 with the piano piece Für Alina, and four years later he left Soviet Estonia for the West, where his music found its audience.

The University of Tartu, Estonia's oldest, was founded in 1632 by which king?

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He signed the founding decree in June 1632, months before he was killed in battle; later wars closed the university twice, the second time for almost a century.

Which kingdom won the 1219 Battle of Lyndanisse under Valdemar II at what is now Tallinn?

Denmark. Valdemar II won at Lyndanisse on 15 June 1219, the day the Dannebrog flag is said to have fallen from the sky, and the Danes then held northern Estonia for more than a century.

By what name was Tallinn known to most of the world from the 13th to the early 20th century?

Reval. One overlord after another used the name for some seven centuries, and the Estonian name Tallinn became the official one only with independence in 1918.

Which Estonian city faces the Russian town of Ivangorod across a river?

Narva. The city was almost wiped out in 1944 and its former residents were kept from returning; Soviet-era settlers took their place, which is why it is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking today.

Estonians who resisted the second Soviet occupation as guerrillas were known as what?

Forest Brothers. They fought on from the woods for years after 1944; one of the last, August Sabbe, was tracked down in 1978 by KGB agents posing as fishermen and drowned in a river as they closed in.

The 2007 relocation of which Soviet war memorial in Tallinn triggered riots and cyberattacks on Estonia?

The Bronze Soldier. Moving the memorial to a military cemetery set off riots in which one person died, then three weeks of cyberattacks on Estonian websites; a year later NATO opened a cyber-defence centre in Tallinn.

Kaja Kallas resigned as Estonia's prime minister in 2024 to take which international post?

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Earlier that year Russia had put her on its wanted list over the removal of Soviet war monuments in Estonia, a move she dismissed as a familiar scare tactic.

Kersti Kaljulaid, president from 2016 to 2021, was Estonia's first what?

Female head of state. She was working as an EU auditor when parliament, after five failed rounds of voting, turned to her as a joint candidate and elected her with 81 of its 101 votes.

Lennart Meri, president from 1992 to 2001, had earlier worked in which creative field?

Film-making and writing. He went into politics as independence neared and became president in 1992, although he had come second in the popular vote: the final choice fell to parliament, which preferred him.

Estonia's national epic, compiled by Friedrich Kreutzwald around 1860, is called what?

Kalevipoeg. The name means 'Son of Kalev'; Kreutzwald wove scattered folk tales into verse about a mythical ruler of ancient Estonia, and the poem became a touchstone of the national awakening.

Kiiking, a sport invented in Estonia in the 1990s, involves doing what?

Swinging a full 360 degrees over a bar. Inventor Ado Kosk gave the swing rigid steel arms and made them telescopic, because the longer the arms, the harder it is to get over the top.

The Estonian pronoun 'tema' does the work of which two English words?

He and she. Estonian has no grammatical gender and no articles either, though learners are not let off lightly: its nouns come in fourteen cases.

In 1994, following Milton Friedman's ideas, Estonia became one of the first countries to adopt what?

A flat income tax. Prime minister Mart Laar later said the only economics book he had read was Friedman's Free to Choose, and that he had assumed its ideas were already normal practice in the West.

Which locally mined fossil fuel generated most of Estonia's electricity for decades?

Oil shale. It has fired Estonia's big power stations since the 1920s, but at a price: the plants long produced most of the country's air pollution, and mining has left hills of waste rock across the north-east.

The ferry MS Estonia sank in a storm in 1994 on an overnight crossing from Tallinn to which city?

Stockholm. The locks on the bow visor gave way in heavy seas, the car deck flooded and the ship capsized, with the loss of more than 850 lives.

Which country lies across the gulf directly to the north of Estonia?

Finland. Helsinki lies only about 80 km from Tallinn, nearer than Estonia's own second city, and ferries cross between the two capitals in a couple of hours.

Estonia's national bird is which species?

Barn swallow. The bird nests under the eaves and rafters of farm buildings all over the country, and a campaign by ornithologists made it the national bird in the early 1960s.

Kama, a traditional Estonian food, is what?

Roasted grain and pea flour in milk. The mix of barley, rye, oats and peas needs no cooking at all: stirred into milk or buttermilk, it serves Estonians as a starter, a drink or a dessert.

Which staple is served with almost every Estonian meal?

Black bread. The rye loaf is so much a part of daily life that Estonians link their national flower to it: the cornflower grows among the rye and is called rukkilill, 'rye flower'.

Jaanipäev, celebrated across Estonia with bonfires on the night before 24 June, marks what?

Midsummer. The bonfire night of 23 June is also Victory Day, which recalls a battlefield win of 1919 in the war of independence, so the two holidays run together.

Estonia is described as one of the least what countries in the world?

Religious. Only about one Estonian in seven calls religion important in daily life; for centuries the church was seen as belonging to the ruling landlords rather than to the peasants who worked their estates.

Estonia's parliament, the Riigikogu, is what kind of legislature?

Unicameral. The inter-war chamber of the same name could dismiss a government whenever it chose, and more than twenty came and went in fifteen years before it was suspended in 1934.

Which war ended in 1721 with Sweden ceding Estonia to Russia?

The Great Northern War. Peter the Great's troops had taken Tallinn in 1710, and the peace signed eleven years later confirmed the conquest, opening some two centuries of Russian rule.

Estonia's two largest lakes are Võrtsjärv and which other, on the Russian border?

Lake Peipus. In April 1242 Alexander Nevsky's army beat an army of crusading knights on its frozen surface, a clash Russians remember as the Battle on the Ice.

Which sport brought Estonia all three of its gold medals at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin?

Cross-country skiing. Kristina Šmigun won two races and Andrus Veerpalu kept the 15 km title he had taken four years earlier, so a team with no other medals finished twelfth in the table.

Which country was the first to recognise Estonia's restored independence in August 1991?

Iceland. It acted on 22 August, two days after the declaration, while far bigger powers held back: the United States waited until 2 September.

The Seto people, a small group on Estonia's border with Russia, mostly follow which faith?

Eastern Orthodoxy. It sets the Setos apart from their Lutheran neighbours, as does leelo, their UNESCO-listed choral tradition, whose finest lead voice is crowned 'Mother of Song' on Seto Kingdom Day.

Kiluvõileib, the open sandwich eaten at Independence Day celebrations, is topped with what?

Spiced sprats and boiled egg. The sandwich has become the signature dish of 24 February, when shops sell several times the usual number; yet the national fish is officially the herring, not the sprat.

Estonia's parliament meets in which historic building in Tallinn?

Toompea Castle. The hilltop fortress has been Estonia's seat of power for some 800 years: each ruler rebuilt it to suit, and today's parliament chamber stands inside the medieval walls.

What did Estonians demand from the Tsar during the 1905 revolution?

Self-rule within Russia. A national congress asked for the Estonian lands to be joined into one autonomous province and for Russification to end; the Tsar's answer was a crackdown in which hundreds were executed.

Estonia's Silmet plant at Sillamäe is a processor of which sought-after materials?

Rare earth elements. The plant was rebuilt after the Second World War to extract uranium, and it went on feeding the Soviet nuclear programme until 1989.

Tallinn was a leading member of which medieval trading network?

The Hanseatic League. Trade boomed after Tallinn joined in 1285, three other Estonian towns became members too, and the merchants' walled Old Town survives as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.