Status Updates From Estonian Lessons

Spot on — I’m borrowing this: "If anyone ever suggests to you that Estonians or people in other nations occupied by Russia are "Russophobic", you can point out that a phobia is an irrational fear whereas their hostility is entirely rational."

In 2024 I was speaking to a group of members of the Estonian Parliament who were from a range of parties with very different ideologies ... I noted that they seemed to set aside their differences when it came to foreign policy and, specifically, the threat from Russia. One of them explained why: 'When the Russians invade, they will line us all up against the same wall and shoot us all together.'

Swimsuits are generally seen as something only strange foreigners wear, although you may find a small towel around your waist is acceptable. I hope you will take my word for it that the nudity part of the experience rapidly seems pretty unimportant, and you just forget you are naked.

[About sauna culture.]

For other people, like me, the most affecting song is 'Ta lendab mesipuu poole', meaning 'He/she flies to the beehive'. This is a song also performed at most state events to remember the thousands of Estonians killed and deported in World War II, so as an ambassador I heard it quite often, and it is simply a beautiful piece of music, with lyrics about Estonians outside Estonia longing to be home.

The opening song for every festival is 'Koit' (Dawn), and hearing the first few bars sends a shudder through you. By the end, there are plenty of singers and people in the crowd in tears.

Under the Soviets, Estonians demonstrated an incredible will to endure, to protect their identity, culture and language, and to regain their freedom. When the world is in such turmoil, resolve like this offers a lesson to us all. It is one reason Estonians and Ukrainians have so much mutual respect.

An Estonian professor of experimental psychology, Jüri Allik, carried out some research a few years ago which suggested that Estonians' view of themselves was based on being the opposite of whatever they considered Russians to be. In that mental construction, whether fair or not, Estonians see themselves as industrious, orderly and goal oriented.

If there are other countries currently in poor shape environmentally, they might look at the progress Estonia has made since 1991 and try to apply the same approach. Back then, I do not believe anyone in Estonia or elsewhere could have imagined Estonia topping a list of 180 countries in overall environmental performance with just two generations.

There has also been something of a revival in paganism, or neo-paganism, with a focus on nature.

Estonia was the fifth-least religious country in the world in 2022, after China (where 13% answered either 'very important' or 'somewhat important'), Japan (14%), Denmark (19%) and Czechia (21%). In Estonia, the figure was 23%, although that was an increase from just 18% in 1993. For comparison, in the US the figure is 61%, in India 86%, and Nigeria is top with 99%.

It also helps if you publish plenty of books in your own language, and here Estonia comes second only to the remarkable Iceland (where 10% of the population has written a book!). Based on figures from relatively recent years, by my calculations Iceland publishes roughly 4,800 books per million people, Estonia publishes roughly 4,500 books per million people ...

Then there is the sound õ, which almost defies description. The best way I came up with to explain how to make this sound is to put your teeth together and then make the noise a child would make if you put a plate of really disgusting food down in front of him, a bit like 'urgh' but with your teeth together.

It also uses more vowels than any other language in the world, including four that were unfamiliar to me before I started. These are ä, which is pronounced like the 'a' in cat or the vowel sound in the word 'fair', ü, which I would describe as a 'u' pronounced with your tongue and lips forward, the same as in German, and ö, which I would say sounds a bit like the vowel sound in 'earn'.

The US State Department's Foreign Service Institute ranks it as the fifth-hardest language for English-speakers to learn. ... it is a Finno-Ugric rather than Indo-European language, and that means almost everything is unfamiliar to anyone other than a Finn. It also has fourteen cases, no gender, no future tense, and is quite irregular.

The survival of the Estonian language through multiple attempts to eradicate it is remarkable, and it is important to understanding Estonia. I learnt it in part because learning and using languages is what diplomats do, but also because I could tell that it would be the key to understand Estonia properly and build true friendships.

Having myself lived abroad with young kids, I was moved by his mentioning of "ei taha" ("I don't want to.") as the first words his younger son learned in an Estonian kindergarden. ... The Estonian equivalent is so direct that no one above their teenage years is allowed to use it! - from the Foreword by Kersti Kaljulaid, President of Estonia, 2016-2021).

[actually from page xii in the Foreword section]