Total population | |
---|---|
c. 1.1 million [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Estonia 925,892 (2023) [2] Other significant population centers: | |
Finland | 49,590–100,000 [lower-alpha 1] [3] [4] |
United States | 29,128 [5] |
Sweden | 25,509 [6] |
Canada | 24,000 [7] |
United Kingdom | 10,000–15,000 [8] |
Russia | 7,778 [9] |
Australia | 7,543 [10] |
Germany | 6,286 [11] |
Norway | 5,092 [12] |
Ukraine | 2,868 [13] |
Ireland | 2,560 [14] |
Belgium | 2,000 [15] |
Latvia | 1,676 [16] |
Denmark | 1,658 [17] |
Netherlands | 1,482 [18] |
Languages | |
Primarily Estonian also Võro and Seto | |
Religion | |
Majority irreligious Historically Protestant Christian (Lutheranism) [19] [20] Currently Lutheran and regional Eastern Orthodox (Estonian Apostolic Orthodox) minority | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Baltic Finns Especially Livonians, Setos, Võros, and Votians |
Estonians or Estonian people (Estonian : eestlased) are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group who speak the Estonian language. Their nation state is Estonia.
The Estonian language is spoken as the first language by the vast majority of Estonians; it is closely related to other Finnic languages, e.g. Finnish, Karelian and Livonian. The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic family of languages, which also includes e.g. the Sami languages. These languages are markedly different from most other native languages spoken in Europe, most of which have been assigned to the Indo-European family of languages. Estonians can also be classified into subgroups according to dialects (e.g. Võros, Setos), although such divisions have become less pronounced due to internal migration and rapid urbanisation in Estonia in the 20th century.
There are approximately 1 million ethnic Estonians worldwide, with the vast majority of them residing in their native Estonia. Estonian diaspora communities formed primarily in Finland, the United States, Sweden, Canada, the United Kingdom and other European Union member states.
Estonia was first inhabited about 10,000 years ago, soon after the ice from the Baltic Ice Lake had melted. Living in the same area for more than 5,000 years would put the ancestors of Estonians among the oldest permanent inhabitants in Europe. [21] On the other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that Finno-Ugric language speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BCE). [22] [23] It has also been argued that Western Uralic tribes reached Fennoscandia first, leading into the development of Sami people, and arrived to the Baltic region later during the Bronze Age [24] or its transition to Iron Age at the latest, [25] which lead into the formation of Baltic Finnic population who would later become such groups as Estonians and Finns. [24]
The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is maarahvas, [26] literally meaning "land people" or "country folk". It was used until the mid-19th century, when it was gradually replaced by Eesti rahvas "Estonian people" during the Estonian national awakening. [27] [28] Eesti, the modern endonym of Estonia, is thought to have similar origins to Aestii , the name used by the ancient Germanic tribes for the neighbouring people living northeast of the mouth of the river Vistula. The Roman historian Tacitus in 98 CE was the first to mention the "Aestii" people in writing. In Old Norse the land south of the Gulf of Finland was called Eistland and the people eistr. The first known book in the Estonian language was printed in 1525, while the oldest known examples of written Estonian originate in 13th-century chronicles.
Although Estonian national consciousness spread in the course of the 19th century during the Estonian national awakening, [29] some degree of ethnic awareness preceded this development. [30] By the 18th century the self-denomination eestlane spread among Estonians along with the older maarahvas. [26] Anton thor Helle's translation of the Bible into Estonian appeared in 1739, and the number of books and brochures published in Estonian increased from 18 in the 1750s to 54 in the 1790s. By the end of the century more than a half of adult peasants could read. The first university-educated intellectuals identifying themselves as Estonians, including Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (1798–1850), Kristjan Jaak Peterson (1801–1822) and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803–1882), appeared in the 1820s. The ruling elites had remained predominantly German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century. Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850), a Baltic-German Estophile, became the first author to treat the Estonians as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before the middle of the 19th century. However, in the middle of the century, the Estonians became more ambitious and started leaning toward the Finns as a successful model of national movement and, to some extent, toward the neighbouring Latvian national movement. By the end of 1860 the Estonians became unwilling to reconcile with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at Russification in the 1880s, their view of Imperial Russia remained positive. [30]
Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries stemming from important cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Scandinavian and German rule and settlement. [31] According to a poll done in 2013, about half of the young Estonians considered themselves Nordic, and about the same number viewed Baltic identity as important. The Nordic identity among Estonians can ovelap with other identities, as it is associated with being Finno-Ugric and their close relationship with the Finnish people and does not exclude being Baltic. [32] In Estonian foreign ministry reports from the early 2000s Nordic identity was preferred over Baltic one. [33] [34]
After the Treaty of Tartu (1920) recognised Estonia's 1918 independence from Russia, ethnic Estonians residing in Russia gained the option of opting for Estonian citizenship (those who opted were called optandid – 'optants') and returning to their fatherland. An estimated 40,000 Estonians lived in Russia in 1920. In sum, 37,578 people moved from Soviet Russia to Estonia (1920–1923). [35] [ failed verification ]
After the occupation of Estonian lands by Tsarist Russia, some Estonians either were deported or moved to various places within the Russian Empire, including the annexed lands of other nations. According to the 1897 census, 6,852 native Estonian-speakers lived in the Russian Partition of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, now divided between Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, Ukraine with small portions in Moldova and Russia, of which over 4,360 lived in territories of today's Poland. [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45]
At that time, 4,281 native Estonian-speakers lived in the Caucasus region in territories of modern-day Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and southern Russia, [46] 4,202 lived in Siberia, [47] and 440 lived in Central Asia in territories of modern-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. [48]
Within reborn Poland in the interwar period, the largest Estonian populations of 31 and 19, were based in Warsaw and Łódź, respectively, with few in other locations, according to the 1921 Polish census. [49] [50]
During World War II, when Estonia was invaded by the Soviet Army in 1944, large numbers of Estonians fled their homeland on ships or smaller boats over the Baltic Sea. Many refugees who survived the risky sea voyage to Sweden or Germany later moved from there to Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States or Australia. [51] Some of these refugees and their descendants returned to Estonia after the nation regained its independence in 1991.
Over the years of independence, increasing numbers of Estonians have chosen to work abroad, primarily in Finland, but also in other European countries (mostly in the UK, Benelux, Sweden, and Germany), making Estonia the country with the highest emigration rate in Europe. [52] This is at least partly due to the easy access to oscillating migration to Finland.
Recognising the problems arising from both low birth rate and high emigration, the country has launched various measures both to increase the birth rate and to lure migrant Estonians back to Estonia. Former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves has lent his support to the campaign Talendid koju! ("Bringing talents home!") [53] which aims to coordinate and promote the return of Estonians who have particular skills needed in Estonia.
One of the largest permanent Estonian communities outside Estonia is in Canada, with about 24,000 people [7] (according to some sources up to 50,000 people). [54] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, about 17,000 arrived in Canada, initially in Montreal. [55] Toronto is currently the city with the largest population of Estonians outside of Estonia. The first Estonian World Festival was held in Toronto in 1972. Some notable Estonian Canadians are Endel Tulving, Elmar Tampõld, Alison Pill, Uno Prii, Kalle Lasn, and Andreas Vaikla.
Y-chromosome haplogroups among Estonians include N1c (35.7%), [56] R1a (33.5%) [57] and I1 (15%). [56] R1a, common in Eastern Europe, [58] was the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup among the pre-Uralic inhabitants of Estonia, as it is the only one found in the local samples from the time of the Corded Ware culture and Bronze Age. Appearance of N1c is linked to the arrival of Uralic-speakers. [25] It originated in East Eurasia [59] and is commonly carried by modern Uralic-speaking groups but also other North Eurasians, including Estonians' Baltic-speaking neighbors Latvians and Lithuanians. [56] Compared to the Balts, Estonians have been noticed to have differences in allelic variances of N1c haplotypes, showing more similarity with other Finno-Ugric-speakers. [60] [61]
When looking at maternal lineages, nearly half (45.8%) of the Estonians have the haplogroup H . About one in four (24.3%) carry the haplogroup U, and the majority of them belong to its subclade U5. [62]
Autosomally Estonians are close with Latvians and Lithuanians. [65] [66] However, they are shifted towards the Finns, who are isolated from most European populations. [67] [68] [69] Northeastern Estonians are particularly close to Finns, while Southeastern Estonians are close to the Balts; other Estonians plot between these two extremes. [64]
Estonians have high steppe-like admixture, and less farmer-related and more hunter-gatherer-related admixture than Western and Central Europeans. The same pattern is found also in the Balts, Finns and Mordvins, for example. [70] Uralic peoples typically carry a Siberian-related component, which is also present in Estonians and makes up about five percent of their ancestry on average. Although they have a smaller share of it than other Balto-Finns, it is one factor that distinguishes them from the Balts. [59] Estonians can also be modelled to have considerably more Finnish-like ancestry than Baltic-speakers. [69] [60]
Estonians have a high sharing of IBD (identity-by-descent) segments with other studied Balto-Finnic groups (Finns, Karelians and Vepsians) and the Sami people, as well as with the Polish people. [66]
The Khanty, also known in older literature as Ostyaks, are a Ugric Indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as "Yugra" in Russia, together with the Mansi. In the autonomous okrug, the Khanty and Mansi languages are given co-official status with Russian. In the 2021 Census, 31,467 persons identified themselves as Khanty. Of those, 30,242 were resident in Tyumen Oblast, of whom 19,568 were living in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and 9,985—in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. 495 were residents of neighbouring Tomsk Oblast, and 109 lived in Sverdlovsk Oblast.
The Udmurts are a Permian (Finno-Ugric) ethnic group in Eastern Europe, who speak the Udmurt language. During the course of the Russian Empire, Udmurts have been referred to mainly as Chud Otyatskaya, Otyaks, Wotyaks or Votyaks, all being exonyms. Today such exonyms are considered offensive by Udmurts themselves and are mainly used against those who have forgotten the Udmurt language. The Udmurts are closely related to Komis to their north, both linguistically and culturally.
Karelians are a Finnic ethnic group who are indigenous to the historical region of Karelia, which is today split between Finland and Russia. Karelians living in Russian Karelia are considered a distinct ethnic group closely related to Finnish Karelians, who are considered a subset of Finns. This distinction historically arose from Karelia having been fought over and eventually split between Sweden and Novgorod, resulting in Karelians being under different cultural spheres.
The Enets are a Samoyedic ethnic group who live on the east bank, near the mouth, of the Yenisei River. Historically nomadic people, they now mainly inhabit the village of Potalovo in Krasnoyarsk Krai in western Siberia near the Arctic Circle. According to the 2010 Census, there are 227 Enets in Russia. In Ukraine, there were 26 Entsi in 2001, of whom 18 were capable of speaking the Enets language.
The Mari are a Finno-Ugric people in Eastern Europe, who have traditionally lived along the Volga and Kama rivers in Russia. Almost half of Maris today live in the Mari El republic, with significant populations in the Bashkortostan and Tatarstan republics. In the past, the Mari have also been known as the Cheremisa or the Cheremis people in Russian and the Çirmeş in Tatar.
Finns or Finnish people are a Baltic Finnic ethnic group native to Finland.
The Ingrians, sometimes called Ingrian Finns, are the Finnish population of Ingria, descending from Lutheran Finnish immigrants introduced into the area in the 17th century, when Finland and Ingria were both parts of the Swedish Empire. In the forced deportations before and after World War II, and during the genocide of Ingrian Finns, most of them were relocated to other parts of the Soviet Union, or killed. Today the Ingrian Finns constitute the largest part of the Finnish population of the Russian Federation. According to some records, some 25,000 Ingrian Finns have returned or still reside in the region of Saint Petersburg.
Veps, or Vepsians, are a Finnic people who speak the Veps language, which belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages.
Yekaterinoslav Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Yekaterinoslav. It bordered Poltava Governorate to the north, Don Host Oblast to the east, Sea of Azov to the southeast, Taurida Governorate to the south, and Kherson Governorate to the east, and covered the area of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts of modern Ukraine.
The Baltic Finnic peoples, often simply referred to as the Finnic peoples, are the peoples inhabiting the Baltic Sea region in Northern and Eastern Europe who speak Finnic languages. They include the Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Veps, Izhorians, Votes, and Livonians. In some cases the Kvens, Ingrians, Tornedalians and speakers of Meänkieli are considered separate from the Finns.
The Mokshas comprise a Mordvinian ethnic group belonging to the Volgaic branch of the Finno-Ugric peoples. They live in Russia, mostly near the Volga and Moksha rivers, a tributary of the Oka River.
Wierland County was one of the four counties of the Russian Empire located in the Governorate of Estonia. It was situated in the eastern part of the governorate. Its capital was Rakvere (Wesenberg). The territory of Wierland County corresponds to most parts of present-day Ida-Viru and Lääne-Viru counties and a small part of Jõgeva County.
Wiek County was one of the four counties of the Russian Empire located in the Governorate of Estonia. It was situated in the western part of the governorate. Its capital was Haapsalu (Hapsal). The territory of Wiek County corresponds to present-day Lääne and Hiiu counties, the westernmost part of Rapla County, and a small part of Pärnu County.
Jerwen County was one of the four counties of the Russian Empire located in the Governorate of Estonia. It was situated in the central part of the governorate. Its capital was Paide (Weissenstein). The territory of Jerwen County corresponds to most of present-day Järva County and small parts of Lääne-Viru and Rapla counties.
Harrien County was one of the four counties of the Governorate of Estonia. It was situated in the central part of the governorate. Its capital was Reval (Tallinn), which was the capital of the governorate as well. The territory of Harrien County corresponds to present-day Harju County and most parts of Rapla County.
Valka County was a historic county in the Governorate of Livonia, and in the Republic of Latvia dissolved during the administrative territorial reform of the Latvian SSR in 1949. Its capital was Valka (Walk).
Valmiera County was a historic county of Latvia. Its capital was Valmiera (Wolmar).
Yamburgsky Uyezd was one of the eight subdivisions of the Saint Petersburg Governorate of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Yamburg (Kingisepp). Yamburgsky Uyezd was located in the westernmost part of the governorate.
Petrozavodsky Uyezd was one of the seven subdivisions of the Olonets Governorate of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Petrozavodsk. Petrozavodsky Uyezd was located in the central part of the governorate.
Lodeynopolsky Uyezd was one of the seven subdivisions of the Olonets Governorate of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Lodeynoye Pole. Lodeynopolsky Uyezd was located in the southern part of the governorate. In terms of present-day administrative borders, the territory of Lodeynopolsky Uyezd is divided between the Lodeynopolsky and Podporozhsky districts of Leningrad Oblast and Vytegorsky District of Vologda Oblast.
Estonia is considered Protestant when classified by its historically predominant major religion (Norris and Inglehart 2011) and thus some authors (e.g., Davie 2003) claim Estonia belongs to Western (Lutheran) Europe, while others (e.g., Norris and Inglehart 2011) see Estonia as a Protestant ex-Communist society.
For this situation there are several reasons, starting from the distant past (the close connection of the churches with the Swedish or German ruling classes) up to the Soviet-period atheist policy when the chain of religious traditions was broken in most families. In Estonia, religion has never played an important role on the political or ideological battlefield. The institutional religious life was dominated by foreigners until the early 20th century. The tendencies that prevailed in the late 1930s for closer relations between the state and Lutheran church [...] ended with the Soviet occupation in 1940.