Prehistory and Viking Age

Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000–11,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, on the banks of Pärnu river in southwest Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating, it was settled around 11,000 years ago.^[35]

The earliest human habitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to the Kunda culture. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in semi-nomadic communities near bodies of water. Subsistence activities consisted of hunting, gathering and fishing.^[36] Around 4900 BCE, ceramics appear of the neolithic period, known as Narva culture.^[37] Starting from around 3200 BC the Corded Ware culture appeared; this included new activities like primitive agriculture and animal husbandry.^[38] The Bronze Age started around 1800 BCE, and saw the establishment of the first hill fort settlements.^[39] A transition from hunter-fisher subsistence to single-farm-based settlement started around 1000 BC, and was complete by the beginning of the Iron Age around 500 BC.^[35]^[40] The large amount of bronze objects indicate the existence of active communication with Scandinavian and Germanic tribes.^[41]

The middle Iron Age produced threats appearing from different directions. Several Scandinavian sagas referred to major confrontations with Estonians, notably when in the early 7th century "Estonian Vikings" defeated and killed Ingvar Harra, the King of Swedes.^[42]^{[additional citation(s) needed]} Similar threats appeared to the east, where East Slavic principalities were expanding westward. Around 1030 the troops of Kievan Rus led by Yaroslav the Wise defeated Estonians and established a fort in modern-day Tartu. This foothold may have lasted until ca 1061 when an Estonian tribe, the Sosols, destroyed it.^[43]^[44]^[45]^[46] Around the 11th century, the Scandinavian Viking era around the Baltic Sea was succeeded by the Baltic Viking era, with seaborne raids by Curonians and by Estonians from the island of Saaremaa, known as Oeselians. In 1187 Estonians (Oeselians), Curonians or/and Karelians sacked Sigtuna, which was a major city of Sweden at the time.^[47]^[48]

Estonia could be divided into two main cultural areas. The coastal areas of north and west Estonia had close overseas contacts with Scandinavia and Finland, while inland south Estonia had more contacts with Balts and Pskov.^[49] The landscape of Ancient Estonia featured numerous hillforts.^[50] Prehistoric or medieval harbour sites have been found on the coast of Saaremaa.^[50] Estonia also has a number of graves from the Viking Age, both individual and collective, with weapons and jewellery including types found commonly throughout Northern Europe and Scandinavia.^[50]^[51] In the early centuries AD, political and administrative subdivisions began to emerge in Estonia. Two larger subdivisions appeared: the parish (Estonian: kihelkond) and the county (Estonian: maakond), which consisted of multiple parishes. A parish was led by elders and centered on a hill fort; in some rare cases a parish had multiple forts. By the 13th century, Estonia comprised eight major counties: Harjumaa, Järvamaa, Läänemaa, Revala, Saaremaa, Sakala, Ugandi, and Virumaa; and six minor, single-parish counties: Alempois, Jogentagana, Mõhu, Nurmekund, Soopoolitse, and Vaiga. Counties were independent entities and engaged only in a loose cooperation against foreign threats.^[52]^[53]

Little is known of medieval Estonians' spiritual and religious practices before Christianization. The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia mentions Tharapita as the superior deity of the then inhabitants of Saaremaa (Oeselians). There is some historical evidence about sacred groves, especially groves of oak trees, having served as places of "pagan" worship.^[54]^[55]

Crusades and the Catholic Era

In 1199, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade to "defend the Christians of Livonia".^[56] Fighting reached Estonia in 1206, when Danish King Valdemar II unsuccessfully invaded Saaremaa. The German Livonian Brothers of the Sword, who had previously subjugated Livonians, Latgalians, and Selonians, started campaigning against the Estonians in 1208, and over next few years both sides made numerous raids and counter-raids. A major leader of the Estonian resistance was Lembitu, an elder of Sakala County, but in 1217 the Estonians suffered a significant defeat in the Battle of St. Matthew's Day, where Lembitu was killed. In 1219, Valdemar II landed at Lindanise, defeated the Estonians in the Battle of Lyndanisse, and started conquering Northern Estonia.^[57]^[58] The next year, Sweden invaded Western Estonia, but were repelled by the Oeselians. In 1223, a major revolt ejected the Germans and Danes from the whole of Estonia, except Reval, but the crusaders soon resumed their offensive, and in 1227, Saaremaa was the last maakond (county) to surrender.^[59]^[60]

After the crusade, the territory of present-day south Estonia and Latvia was named Terra Mariana; later on it became known simply as Livonia.^[61] Northern Estonia became the Danish Duchy of Estonia, while the rest was divided between the Sword Brothers and prince-bishoprics of Dorpat and Ösel–Wiek. In 1236, after suffering a major defeat, the Sword Brothers merged into the Teutonic Order becoming the Livonian Order.^[62] In the next decades there were several uprisings against the Teutonic rulers in Saaremaa. In 1343, a major uprising encompassed over north Estonia and Saaremaa. The Teutonic Order suppressed the rebellion by 1345, and in 1346 the Danish king sold his possessions in Estonia to the Order.^[63]^[64] The unsuccessful rebellion led to a consolidation of power for the upper-class German minority.^[65] For the subsequent centuries Low German remained the language of the ruling elite in both Estonian cities and the countryside.^[66]

Reval (Tallinn), the capital of Danish Estonia founded on the site of Lindanise, adopted the Lübeck law and received full town rights in 1248.^[67] The Hanseatic League controlled trade on the Baltic Sea, and overall the four largest towns in Estonia became members: Reval, Dorpat (Tartu), Pernau (Pärnu), and Fellin (Viljandi). Reval acted as a trade intermediary between Novgorod and western Hanseatic cities, while Dorpat filled the same role with Pskov. Many artisans' and merchants guilds were formed during the period.^[68] Protected by their stone walls and membership in the Hansa, prosperous cities like Reval and Dorpat often defied other rulers of the medieval Livonian Confederation.^[69]^{[lower-alpha 5]}

Post-Reformation Era

The Reformation began in central Europe in 1517, and soon spread northward to Livonia despite some opposition by the Livonian Order.^[71] Towns were the first to embrace Protestantism in the 1520s, and by the 1530s the majority of the landowners and rural population had adopted Lutheranism.^[72]^[73] Church services were now conducted in vernacular language, which initially meant Low German, but already from the 1530s onward the regular religious services were held in Estonian.^[72]^[74]

During the 16th century, the expansionist monarchies of Muscovy, Sweden, and Poland–Lithuania consolidated power, posing a growing threat to decentralised Livonia weakened by disputes between cities, nobility, bishops, and the Order.^[72]^[75]

In 1558, Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia (Muscovy) invaded Livonia, starting the Livonian War. The Livonian Order was decisively defeated in 1560. The majority of Livonia accepted Polish rule, while Reval and the nobles of northern Estonia swore loyalty to the Swedish king, and the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek sold his lands to the Danish king. Tsar Ivan's forces were at first able to conquer the larger part of Livonia, however in the 1570s the Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish armies went on the offensive and the war ended in 1583 with Russian defeat.^[75]^[76] As a result of the war, northern Estonia became Swedish Duchy of Estonia, southern Estonia became Polish Duchy of Livonia, and Saaremaa remained under Danish control.^[77]

In 1600, the Polish–Swedish War broke out, causing further devastation. The protracted war ended in 1629 with Sweden gaining Livonia, including the regions of Southern Estonia and Northern Latvia.^[78] Danish Saaremaa was transferred to Sweden in 1645.^[79] The wars had halved the population of Estonia from about 250–270,000 people in the mid 16th century to 115–120,000 in the 1630s.^[80]

While large parts of the rural population remained in serfdom during the Swedish rule, legal reforms strengthened both serfs' and free tenant farmers' land usage and inheritance rights – hence this period got the reputation of "The Good Old Swedish Time" in historical memory.^[81] Swedish King Gustaf II Adolf established gymnasiums in Reval and Dorpat; the latter was upgraded to Tartu University in 1632. Printing presses were also established in both towns. The beginnings of the Estonian public education system appeared in the 1680s, largely due to efforts of Bengt Forselius, who also introduced orthographical reforms to written Estonian.^[82] The population of Estonia grew rapidly until the Great Famine of 1695–97 in which 70,000–75,000 people died – about 20% of the population.^[83]

During the 1700–1721 Great Northern War, the Tsardom of Russia (Muscovy) conquered the whole of Estonia by 1710.^[84] The war again devastated the population of Estonia, with the 1712 population estimated at only 150,000–170,000.^[85] In 1721, Estonia was divided into two governorates: the Governorate of Estonia, which included Tallinn and the northern part of Estonia, and the southern Governorate of Livonia, which extended to the northern part of Latvia.^[86] The tsarist administration restored all the political and landholding rights of the local aristocracy.^[87] The rights of local farmers reached their lowest point, as serfdom completely dominated agricultural relations during the 18th century.^[88] Serfdom was formally abolished in 1816–1819, but this initially had very little practical effect; major improvements in farmers' rights started with reforms in the mid-19th century.^[89]

National Awakening

The Estonian national awakening began in the 1850s as several leading figures started promoting an Estonian national identity among the general populace. Widespread farm buyouts by Estonians and the resulting rapidly growing class of land-owning farmers provided the economic basis for the formation of this new "Estonian identity". In 1857, Johann Voldemar Jannsen started publishing one of the first successful circulating Estonian-language weekly newspapers, Perno Postimees, and began popularising the denomination of oneself as eestlane (Estonian).^[90] Schoolmaster Carl Robert Jakobson and clergyman Jakob Hurt became leading figures in a nationalist movement, encouraging Estonian farmers to take pride in their language and ethnic Estonian identity.^[91] The first nationwide movements formed, such as a campaign to establish the Estonian language Alexander School, the founding of the Society of Estonian Literati and the Estonian Students' Society, and the first national song festival, held in 1869 in Tartu.^[92]^[93]^[94] Linguistic reforms helped to develop the Estonian language.^[95] The national epic Kalevipoeg was published in 1862, and 1870 saw the first performances of Estonian theatre.^[96]^[97] In 1878 a major split happened in the national movement. The moderate wing led by Hurt focused on development of culture and Estonian education, while the radical wing led by Jakobson started demanding increased political and economical rights.^[93]

At the end of the 19th century, Russification began, as the central government initiated various administrative and cultural measures to tie Baltic governorates more closely to the empire.^[92] The Russian language replaced German and Estonian in most secondary schools and universities, and many social and cultural activities in local languages were suppressed.^[97] In the late 1890s, there was a new surge of nationalism with the rise of prominent figures like Jaan Tõnisson and Konstantin Päts. In the early 20th century, Estonians started taking over control of local governments in towns from Germans.^[98]

During the 1905 Revolution, the first legal Estonian political parties were founded. An Estonian national congress was convened and demanded the unification of Estonian areas into a single autonomous territory and an end to Russification. The unrest was accompanied by both peaceful political demonstrations and violent riots with looting in the commercial district of Tallinn and in a number of wealthy landowners' manors in the Estonian countryside. The Tsarist government responded with a brutal crackdown; some 500 people were executed and hundreds more jailed or deported to Siberia.^[99]^[100]

Independence

In 1917, after the February Revolution, the governorate of Estonia was expanded by the Russian Provisional Government to include Estonian-speaking areas of Livonia and was granted autonomy, enabling the election of the Estonian Provincial Assembly.^[101] The Bolsheviks seized power in Estonia in November 1917, and the Provincial Assembly was disbanded. However, the Provincial Assembly established the Salvation Committee, and during the short interlude between Bolshevik retreat and German arrival, the committee declared independence and formed the Estonian Provisional Government on 24 February 1918 in the capital Tallinn. German occupation immediately followed, but after their defeat in World War I, the Germans were forced to hand over power back to the Provisional Government of independent Estonia on 19 November 1918.^[102]^[103]

On 28 November 1918, Soviet Russia invaded, starting the Estonian War of Independence.^[104] The Red Army came within 30 km of Tallinn, but in January 1919, the Estonian Army, led by Johan Laidoner, went on a counter-offensive, ejecting Bolshevik forces from Estonia within a few weeks. Renewed Soviet attacks failed, and in the spring of 1919, the Estonian army, in co-operation with White Russian forces, advanced into Russia and Latvia.^[105]^[106] In June 1919, Estonia defeated the German Landeswehr which had attempted to dominate Latvia, restoring power to the government of Kārlis Ulmanis there. After the collapse of the White Russian forces, the Red Army launched a major offensive against Narva in late 1919, but failed to achieve a breakthrough. On 2 February 1920, the Tartu Peace Treaty was signed by Estonia and Soviet Russia, with the latter pledging to permanently give up all sovereign claims to Estonia.^[105]^[107]

In April 1919, the Estonian Constituent Assembly was elected. The Constituent Assembly passed a sweeping land reform expropriating large estates, and adopted a new highly liberal constitution establishing Estonia as a parliamentary democracy.^[108]^[109] In 1924, the Soviet Union organised a communist coup attempt, which quickly failed.^[110] Estonia's cultural-autonomy law for ethnic minorities, adopted in 1925, is widely recognised as one of the most liberal in the world at that time.^[111] The Great Depression put heavy pressure on Estonia's political system, and in 1933, the right-wing Vaps movement spearheaded a constitutional reform establishing a strong presidency.^[112]^[113] On 12 March 1934 the acting head of state, Konstantin Päts, extended a state of emergency over the entire country, under the pretext that the Vaps movement had been planning a coup. Päts went on to rule by decree for several years, while the parliament did not reconvene ("era of silence").^[114] A new constitution was adopted in a 1937 referendum, and in 1938 a new bicameral parliament was elected in a popular vote, where both pro-government and opposition candidates participated.^[115] The Päts régime was relatively benign compared to other authoritarian régimes in interwar Europe, and the régime never used violence against political opponents.^[116]

Estonia joined the League of Nations in 1921.^[117] Attempts to establish a larger alliance together with Finland, Poland, and Latvia failed, with only a mutual-defence pact being signed with Latvia in 1923, and later was followed up with the Baltic Entente of 1934.^[118]^[119] In the 1930s, Estonia also engaged in secret military co-operation with Finland.^[120] Non-aggression pacts were signed with the Soviet Union in 1932, and with Germany in 1939.^[117]^[121] In 1939, Estonia declared neutrality, but this proved futile in World War II.^[122]

World War II

A week before the outbreak of World War II, on 23 August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In the pact's secret protocol Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland were divided between USSR and Germany into "spheres of influence", with Estonia assigned to the Soviet "sphere".^[123] On 24 September 1939, the Soviet dictator Stalin presented the Estonian government an ultimatum demanding that Estonia immediately sign a treaty that would allow the USSR to establish military bases in Estonia, or else face war. The Estonian government decided to avoid military conflict, and a "mutual assistance treaty" was signed in Moscow on 28 September 1939.^[124] On 14 June 1940 the Soviet Union instituted a full naval and air blockade on Estonia. On the same day, the airliner Kaleva was shot down by the Soviet Air Force. On 16 June, the USSR presented an ultimatum demanding completely free passage of the Red Army into Estonia and the establishment of a pro-Soviet government. Feeling that resistance was hopeless, the Estonian government complied and, on the next day, the whole country was occupied.^[125]^[126] On 6 August 1940, Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR.^[127]

The USSR established a repressive wartime regime in occupied Estonia. Many of the country's high-ranking civil and military officials, intelligentsia and industrialists were arrested. Soviet repressions culminated on 14 June 1941 with mass deportation of around 11,000 people to Russia.^[128]^[129] When Operation Barbarossa (accompanied by Estonian guerrilla soldiers called "Forest Brothers"^[130]) began against the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 in the form of the "Summer War" (Estonian: Suvesõda), around 34,000 young Estonian men were forcibly drafted into the Red Army, fewer than 30% of whom survived the war. Soviet destruction battalions initiated a scorched earth policy. Political prisoners who could not be evacuated were executed by the NKVD.^[131]^[132] Many Estonians went into the forest, starting an anti-Soviet guerrilla campaign. In July, German Wehrmacht reached south Estonia. The USSR evacuated Tallinn in late August with massive losses, and capture of the Estonian islands was completed by German forces in October.^[133]

Initially, many Estonians were hopeful that Germany would help to restore Estonia's independence, but this soon proved to be in vain. Only a puppet collaborationist administration was established, and occupied Estonia was merged into Reichskommissariat Ostland, with its economy being fully subjugated to German military needs.^[134] About a thousand Estonian Jews who had not managed to leave were almost all quickly killed in 1941. Numerous forced labour camps were established where thousands of Estonians, foreign Jews, Romani, and Soviet prisoners of war perished.^[135] German occupation authorities started recruiting men into small volunteer units but, as these efforts provided meagre results and the military situation worsened, forced conscription was instituted in 1943, eventually leading to formation of the Estonian Waffen-SS division.^[136] Thousands of Estonians who did not want to fight in the German military secretly escaped to Finland, where many volunteered to fight together with Finns against Soviets.^[137]

The Red Army reached the Estonian borders again in early 1944, but its advance into Estonia was stopped in heavy fighting near Narva for six months by German forces, including numerous Estonian units.^[138] In March, the Soviet Air Force carried out heavy bombing raids against Tallinn and other Estonian towns.^[139] In July, the Soviets started a major offensive from the south, forcing the Germans to abandon mainland Estonia in September and the Estonian islands in November.^[138] As German forces were retreating from Tallinn, the last pre-war prime minister Jüri Uluots appointed a government headed by Otto Tief in an unsuccessful attempt to restore Estonia's independence.^[140] Tens of thousands of people, including most of the Estonian Swedes, fled westwards to avoid the new Soviet occupation.^[141]

Overall, Estonia lost about 25% of its population through deaths, deportations and evacuations in World War II.^[142] Estonia also suffered some irrevocable territorial losses, as the Soviet Union transferred border areas comprising about 5% of Estonian pre-war territory from the Estonian SSR to the Russian SFSR.^[143]

Second Soviet occupation

Thousands of Estonians opposing the second Soviet occupation joined a guerrilla movement known as the "Forest Brothers". The armed resistance was heaviest in the first few years after the war, but Soviet authorities gradually wore it down through attrition, and resistance effectively ceased to exist in the mid-1950s.^[144] The Soviets initiated a policy of collectivisation, but as farmers remained opposed to it a campaign of terror was unleashed. In March 1949 about 20,000 Estonians were deported to Siberia. Collectivization was fully completed soon afterwards.^[128]^[145]

The Russian-dominated occupation authorities under the Soviet Union began Russification, with hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians and other "Soviet people" being induced to settle in occupied Estonia, in a process which eventually threatened to turn indigenous Estonians into a minority in their own native land.^[146] In 1945 Estonians formed 97% of the population, but by 1989 their share of the population had fallen to 62%.^[147] Occupying authorities carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing, mass deportation of indigenous populations, and mass colonization by Russian settlers which led to Estonia losing 3% of its native population.^[148] By March 1949, 60,000 people were deported from Estonia and 50,000 from Latvia to the gulag system in Siberia, where death rates were 30%. The occupying regime established an Estonian Communist Party, where Russians were the majority in party membership.^[149] Economically, heavy industry was strongly prioritised, but this did not improve the well-being of the local population, and caused massive environmental damage through pollution.^[150] Living standards under the Soviet occupation kept falling further behind nearby independent Finland.^[146] The country was heavily militarised, with closed military areas covering 2% of territory.^[151] Islands and most of the coastal areas were turned into a restricted border zone which required a special permit for entry.^[152] Estonia was quite closed until the second half of the 1960s, when gradually Estonians began to covertly watch Finnish television in the northern parts of the country, thus getting a better picture of the way of life behind the Iron Curtain.^[153]

The majority of Western countries considered the annexation of Estonia by the Soviet Union illegal.^[154] Legal continuity of the Estonian state was preserved through the government-in-exile and the Estonian diplomatic representatives which Western governments continued to recognise.^[155]^[156]

Independence restored

The introduction of perestroika by the Soviet central government in 1987 made open political activity possible again in Estonia, which triggered an independence restoration process later known as laulev revolutsioon ("the Singing revolution").^[157] The environmental Fosforiidisõda ("Phosphorite war") campaign became the first major protest movement against the central government.^[158] In 1988, new political movements appeared, such as the Popular Front of Estonia, which came to represent the moderate wing in the independence movement, and the more radical Estonian National Independence Party, which was the first non-communist party in the Soviet Union and demanded full restoration of independence.^[159] On 16 November 1988, after the first non-rigged multi-candidate elections in half a century, the parliament of Soviet-controlled Estonia issued the Sovereignty Declaration, asserting the primacy of Estonian laws. Over the next two years, many other administrative parts (or "republics") of the USSR followed the Estonian example, issuing similar declarations.^[160]^[161] On 23 August 1989, about 2 million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians participated in a mass demonstration, forming the Baltic Way human chain across the three countries.^[162] In February 1990, elections were held to form the Congress of Estonia.^[163] In March 1991, a referendum was held where 78.4% of voters supported full independence. During the coup attempt in Moscow, Estonia declared restoration of independence on 20 August 1991.^[164]

Soviet authorities recognised Estonian independence on 6 September 1991, and on 17 September Estonia was admitted into the United Nations.^[165] The last units of the Russian army left Estonia in 1994.^[166]

In 1992 radical economic reforms were launched for switching over to a market economy, including privatisation and currency reform.^[167] Estonia has been a member of the WTO since 13 November 1999.^[168]

Since regaining independence in 1991, Estonian foreign policy has been aligned with other Western democracies, and in 2004 Estonia joined both the European Union and NATO.^[169] On 9 December 2010, Estonia became a member of OECD.^[170] On 1 January 2011, Estonia joined the eurozone and adopted the euro, the single currency of EU.^[171] Estonia was a member of the UN Security Council from 2020 to 2021.^[172]

The 100th Anniversary of the Estonian Republic was celebrated on 24 February 2018.^[173]

English is the most widely spoken foreign language in Estonia today. According to the most recent (2021) census data 76% of the population can speak a foreign language. After English, Russian is the second most widely spoken foreign language in Estonia, and in the census 17% of the native speakers of standard Estonian reported that they can also speak a dialect of Estonian.^[174]^[175]