Estonians or Estonian people () are a Finnic ethnic group native to the Baltic Sea region in Northern Europe, primarily their nation state of Estonia.
Estonians primarily speak the Estonian language, a language closely related to other Finnic languages, e.g. Finnish language, Karelian and Livonian. The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic 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 (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, and the United Kingdom.
History
Prehistoric roots
Estonia was first inhabited about 13,000–11,000 years ago, when the Baltic Ice Lake melted. Living in the same area for more than 5,000 years would put Estonians' ancestors among Europe's oldest permanent inhabitants.
[ Unrepresented Nations and peoples organization By Mary Kate Simmons; p141 ] On the other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that Finno-Ugric speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the Early Bronze Age (ca. 1800 BCE).
[Petri Kallio 2006: Suomalais-ugrilaisen kantakielen absoluuttisesta kronologiasta. — Virittäjä 2006. (With English summary).] It has also been argued that Western Uralic tribes reached
Fennoscandia first, leading into the development of the Sámi peoples, and arrived in the
Baltic region later in the Bronze Age
or the transition to the
Iron Age at the latest.
This lead into the formation of Baltic Finnic peoples, who would later become such groups as Estonians and
Finns.
[Lang, Valter: Homo Fennicus – Itämerensuomalaisten etnohistoria, pp. 335–336. Finnish Literature Society, 2020. ]
The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is maarahvas,
National consciousness
Although Estonian national consciousness spread in the course of the 19th century during the Estonian national awakening,
some degree of ethnic awareness preceded this development.
By the 18th century the self-denomination eestlane spread among Estonians along with the older maarahvas.
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 1800, more than a half of adult Estonians 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
Baltic Germans 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, Estonians became more ambitious and started leaning toward the
Finnish people and their so-called Fennoman movement as successful model of national movement. By the end of 1860s, the Estonians became unwilling to reconcile with German cultural and political hegemony. Before the attempts at
Russification in the 1880s, their view of the
Russian Empire remained positive.
Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries stemming from important cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during and Germany rule and settlement.[Piirimäe, Helmut. Historical heritage: the relations between Estonia and her Nordic neighbors. In M. Lauristin et al. (eds.), Return to the Western world: Cultural and political perspectives on the Estonian post-communist transition. Tartu: Tartu University Press, 1997.] 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.[ Estonian foreign ministry report , 2004][ Estonian foreign ministry report , 2002]
After the Treaty of Tartu (1920) recognised Estonia's 1918 independence from Russia, ethnic Estonians residing in Russia gained the option to acquire the citizenship of Estonia upon returning to the newly independent country. An estimated 40,000 Estonians lived in Russia in 1920, and 37,578 people resettled from Russia to Estonia in 1920–1923.
Emigration
During World War II, when Estonia was occupied 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.
[Past, Evald, By Land and By Sea, Booklocker, 2015, ] Some of these refugees and their descendants returned to Estonia after the nation regained its independence in 1991.
Over the years of independence, many Estonians have chosen to work abroad, primarily in Finland, but also in the UK, Benelux, Sweden, and Germany.
Estonians in Canada
One of the largest permanent Estonian communities outside Estonia is in Canada, with about 24,000 people
(according to some sources up to 50,000 people).
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, about 17,000 arrived in Canada, initially in
Montreal.
is currently the city with the largest population of Estonians outside of Estonia. The first Estonian World Festival was held in Toronto in 1972.
Genetics
Uniparental haplogroups
Y-chromosome haplogroups among Estonians include N1c (35.7%),
[Lang, Valter: Homo Fennicus – Itämerensuomalaisten etnohistoria, pp. 93–95. Finnish Literature Society, 2020. .] R1a (33.5%)
and I1 (15%).
R1a, common in Eastern Europe,
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.
It originated in East Eurasia
and is commonly carried by modern Uralic-speaking groups but also other North Eurasians, including Estonians' Baltic-speaking neighbors
Latvians and
Lithuanians.
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.
[Lappalainen, Tuuli: Human genetic variation in the Baltic Sea region: features of population history and natural selection. PhD thesis. Helsinki University Print, Helsinki. 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10138/22129]
When looking at maternal lineages, nearly half (45 %) of the Estonians have the haplogroup H . About one in four (24.2 %) carry the haplogroup U, and the majority of them belong to its subclade U5.
Autosomal DNA
Autosomally Estonians are close with
Latvians and
Lithuanians However, they are shifted towards the
Finns, who are isolated from most European populations.
Northeastern Estonians are particularly close to Finns, while southeastern Estonians are close to the Balts; other Estonians plot between these two extremes.
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.
Estonians have a high sharing of IBD (identity-by-descent) segments with other studied Finnic groups (Finns, Karelians and Vepsians) and the Sami people, as well as with the Polish people people.
See also
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Demographics of Estonia
-
Estonian Americans
-
Estonian Argentines
-
Estonian Australians
-
Estonian Canadians
-
Estonian national awakening
-
Gauja Estonians
-
List of Estonian Americans
-
List of notable Estonians
Notes
Further reading
External links
