Area: 45 226 sq.km
Total national border length: 1,450.2 km
Length of Estonia’s Baltic coastline: 768.6 km
Population: 1,364 million (Source: Population Register in year 2000)
Borders with: Latvia, Russia

Languages of Estonia
Official Language: Estonian

Estonian is, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and thousands in various emigrant communities. Estonian is Uralic language and is closely related to Finnish.
Geography of Estonia
Estonia is a flat country with an area of 45,226 square kilometers. Estonia has many islands – the largest are Saaremaa (literally island country) and Hiiumaa. The two islands are popular Estonian vacation spots. The country's highest point, Suur Munamägi (Egg Mountain), lies in the hilly south-east and reaches 318 meters above sea level. The country has over 1,400 natural and artificial lakes.

Story
The Estonians resisted the Vikings, Danes, Swedes and Russians before the 13th century. In 1346, the Danes who held northern Estonia sold the land to the Teutonic Order of Germany, who already held Livonia. The Teutonic Knights reduced the Estonians into serfdom. In 1526 the Swedes took over. After 1721, when Russia replaced Sweden as the ruling power in the Peace of Nystad, the Estonians faced double bondage – to the Balts and to tsarist officials. The repression lasted until the final months of World War I, when Estonia finally gained independence after a victorious war (1918–1920). But soon after World War II began, the nation was occupied by Russian troops and incorporated as the 16th Republic of the USSR in 1940. Germany occupied the nation from 1941 to 1944 when it was recaptured by the Soviets.

Estonia declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990. Soviet resistance followed, but the Soviet Union recognized Estonian citizenship on September 6, 1991. UN membership followed on September 17th. The newly independent nation welcomed free market reforms. Propelled by foreign investment, progress continued. In 2004 Estonia became a member of both the EU and NATO.

Culture
Estonia blends indigenous heritage with mainstream Nordic and European cultural aspects. Due to its history and geography, the culture of Estonia has been influenced by the traditions of the various Finnish, Baltic, Slavic and Germanic peoples of the adjacent areas, as well as by formerly dominant powers - Sweden and Russia.

Today, Estonian society promotes freedom and liberalism and discourages centralized power and corruption. The Protestant work ethic remains a major cultural pillar, and free education is a cherished institution. Like mainstream culture in the other Nordic countries, one can see that Estonian culture is built on ascetic environmental realities and traditional livelihoods, a legacy of comparatively widespread egalitarianism for practical reasons, and the ideals of closeness to nature and self-sufficiency.

The Estonian Academy of Arts offers higher education in art, design, architecture and media, and the University of Tartu takes an approach to popularizing local culture such as local building, local blacksmithing, local textile design, traditional handicrafts and traditional music, but also jazz and church music .

Nature
Almost half of Estonian territory is covered by forest. The forest area has more than doubled in the last 50 years. Estonia lies on a border area where the Siberian coniferous taiga opens into a European deciduous forest zone. There are 87 native and more than 500 introduced tree and shrub species listed.

Estonia is rich in wetlands. There are about 165 000 swamps with an area of more than one hectare. The total area of swamps and swamp forests is 1 009 101 ha, which is more than a fifth of the country's territory.

Act
Since the late 1990s, Estonia has had a market economy and one of the highest per capita incomes in Eastern Europe. As the largest city, Tallinn has developed into a financial center and the Tallinn Stock Exchange has recently joined the OMX system. The current government has pursued a tight budgetary policy that has resulted in balanced budgets and low public debt.