It has been said that of all nations of Europe, the Estonians have lived in the same area longest. The still unresolved question is whether the period is 5000 or 10 000 years. We certainly speak an entirely different language from the Indo-Europeans, the Germanic and Slavonic nations with whom we have lived side by side |
and who have reigned our country. Thus language has been the most reliable means of differentiating between our own people and foreigners, the foundation of Estonians’ identity. The oldest example of Estonian spiritual culture is doubtless our folk poetry, the mythological subject |
matter of which is believed to go back as far as the Stone Age. But there is no written evidence to present from that time; the first fragment of a sentence in the Estonian language dates from a chronicle written by German Crusaders who conquered Estonia in the early 13th century. |
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