Estonia: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Estonia known for?

First, the medieval old town of Tallinn, its walls and towers almost wholly intact and counted among the finest in Europe; then the Hanseatic League that raised it. The Baltic Sea frames the rest. Its islands, Saaremaa and Hiiumaa among more than two thousand, and the Estonian language, a Finnic tongue closer to Finnish than to any neighbour, round out what the country is known for.

Where is Estonia?

Estonia lies in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. The Gulf of Finland runs along its northern coast, with Finland on the far side of the water, while the open Baltic Sea washes the western shore across from Sweden. Latvia adjoins it to the south. Russia closes the eastern border.

Between these edges the country is small, a stretch of mainland and islands set between the Baltic and its neighbours. Water and islands define the map as much as the mainland does. Off the western coast lie the large islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, the biggest of more than 2,300 islands and islets that fringe the east coast of the Baltic Sea.

The shoreline is long and broken. Tallinn stands on the Gulf of Finland in the north, and Tartu sits inland to the south-east, the country's two largest urban centres. Between and around them lie the islands, the bays, and the low mainland, a quiet land held between the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland, and the borders with Latvia and Russia.

What is the history of Estonia?

Estonia's recorded story runs through its coastal towns and the Baltic trade that made them. In the Middle Ages Tallinn grew into a walled Hanseatic port, its ring of stone walls and towers built to guard a merchant town that traded across the Baltic Sea. Much of that town still stands.

The old core of Tallinn survives almost intact, one of the best-kept medieval old towns in Europe, a record in stone of the Hanseatic League and the long reach of Baltic commerce. Trade bound it to the sea. The modern state is far younger than the old towns that stand within it.

The Republic of Estonia, Eesti Vabariik, was founded in 1918, gathering the Estonian-speaking lands along the eastern Baltic into a single country. That date still marks the nation's beginning. It took its place among the three Baltic states.

Since then the small nation on the Gulf of Finland has held to its own Finnic language and its medieval heritage, from the walls of Tallinn to the town of Tartu, keeping a long past alive within a young republic on the shore of the Baltic Sea.

What is Estonia like?

Estonian life turns on a language and a coast. The Estonian language, part of the small Finnic family, is closer to Finnish across the Gulf of Finland than to any of the country's other neighbours, and it anchors a strong sense of a distinct nation between larger lands. The tongue is the heart of it.

Carried down the centuries, Estonian holds the identity of the people along the eastern Baltic, a Finnic voice set apart from the Baltic and Slavic tongues that surround it. The other thread is the sea and the medieval past. Estonians keep close ties to the Baltic Sea, its islands, and the old Hanseatic towns that grew along the coast, above all Tallinn, whose medieval walls and towers still frame daily life in the capital.

Summers pull people to the islands. Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, and the long shoreline draw a warm-season life of coast, water, and open country, while the towns of Tallinn and Tartu carry the year-round culture of a small northern nation that guards its own language, its medieval heritage, and its place on the shore of the Baltic Sea.

What is the climate of Estonia?

Estonia has a cool temperate climate shaped by the Baltic Sea. Summers are short, mild, and light, with long northern days along the Gulf of Finland, while winters run cold and dark, bringing frost, snow, and ice to the coast and the islands. The sea tempers the extremes.

Spring and autumn are grey and changeable, wet with weather blowing in off the Baltic across the northern land.

How do you get to Estonia?

Estonia is easy to reach across the Baltic. Tallinn holds the main airport and a busy passenger port on the Gulf of Finland, where ferries cross from Finland, and roads and rail run south into Latvia and on across the wider Baltic region. Most arrive through the capital.

From Tallinn the small country is quick to cross, with the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa reached by ferry off the western coast of the Baltic Sea.