Estonia Culture & Language

Estonian culture, in the encyclopaedia's own summary, joins an indigenous inheritance -- the language and the sauna -- to mainstream Nordic and European habits. The language is Uralic, closest to Finnish, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; it is the country's identity in a way few languages are, because for seven centuries it was the one thing the rulers did not share. The song festival is the other: first held in Tartu in 1869, held in Tallinn since 1896, a UNESCO Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage, and the instrument of the Singing Revolution.

Religion has almost left: 75.7 per cent of Estonians told the survey the encyclopaedia cites that they have none, in a country that was 80 per cent Lutheran before the war; the churches stand as architecture and concert halls. The digital state has partly taken faith's place as a shared project -- 99 per cent of public services online, according to the tourist board, and e-residency for the world since 2014.

Tartu, home to the university and the national museum, is the cultural capital and the second city; Tallinn is the port, the government and the old town; the islands and the south-east keep the older rural Estonia, with the Seto people of the Russian border as its most distinct minority.

Estonian is the official language, a Uralic and Finnic tongue spoken natively by about 1.1 million people and related to Finnish rather than to anything spoken by Estonia's Latvian or Russian neighbours. It has fourteen noun cases, no gender, no future tense and long, doubled vowels, and a visitor is not expected to manage it; English is spoken widely in Tallinn and Tartu and by anyone under fifty, Russian by the older Russian-speaking minority of the north-east and parts of Tallinn, Finnish by those who deal with the ferries. Tere (hello), aitäh (thank you) and terviseks (cheers) are the three words that repay learning.