![]() Countries with significant Estonian population and descendants. | |
Total population | |
---|---|
c. 1.1 million[1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
![]() Other significant population centers: | |
![]() | 49,590–100,000[a][3][4] |
![]() | 29,128[5] |
![]() | 25,509[6] |
![]() | 24,000[7] |
![]() | 10,000–15,000[8] |
![]() | 7,778[9] |
![]() | 7,543[10] |
![]() | 6,286[11] |
![]() | 5,092[12] |
![]() | 2,868[13] |
![]() | 2,560[14] |
![]() | 2,000[15] |
![]() | 1,676[16] |
![]() | 1,658[17] |
![]() | 1,482[18] |
Languages | |
Primarily Estonian also Võro and Seto | |
Religion | |
Majority irreligious Historically Protestant Christian (Lutheranism)[19][20] Currently Lutheran and regional Eastern Orthodox (Estonian Apostolic Orthodox) minority | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Baltic Finns |
Estonians or Estonian people (Estonian: eestlased) 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, Karelian and Livonian. The Finnic languages are a subgroup of the larger Uralic family of 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 dialects (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.
Estonia is considered Protestant when classified by its historically predominant major religion (Norris and Inglehart 2011) and thus some authors (e.g., Davie 2003) claim Estonia belongs to Western (Lutheran) Europe, while others (e.g., Norris and Inglehart 2011) see Estonia as a Protestant ex-Communist society.
For this situation there are several reasons, starting from the distant past (the close connection of the churches with the Swedish or German ruling classes) up to the Soviet-period atheist policy when the chain of religious traditions was broken in most families. In Estonia, religion has never played an important role on the political or ideological battlefield. The institutional religious life was dominated by foreigners until the early 20th century. The tendencies that prevailed in the late 1930s for closer relations between the state and Lutheran church [...] ended with the Soviet occupation in 1940.
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