Blue+Black+White=Estonia! ;) is a featured article!
Hello all this is me NORTH PONY! And that what i writed is about Estonia, my home country. Our country flag colors are Blue, Black and White and coat of arms is all most same like England but different colors.
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______Flag of Estonia_______________and_______Coat of arms____[]
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Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia (343 km), and to the east by Lake Peipusand Russia (338.6 km). Across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia covers 45,227 km2(17,462 sq mi), and is influenced by a humid continental climate.
Estonia is a democratic parliamentary republic divided into fifteencounties, with its capital and largest city being Tallinn. With a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of theEuropean Union, Eurozone, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Schengen Area. The Estonians are a Finnic people, and the official language, Estonian, is a Finno-Ugric language closely related to Finnish, and distantly to Hungarian and to the Sami languages.
Skype.[]
Estonia was the country who first made Skype, one of the world famous Video chat.
First released in August 2003, Skype was created by Dane Janus Friisand Swede Niklas Zennström in cooperation with Estonians Ahti Heinla,Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn, who developed the backend which was also used in music-sharing application Kazaa. In September 2005,eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. In September 2009, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced the acquisition of 65% of Skype for $1.9 billion fromeBay, valuing the business at $2.75 billion. Skype was later acquired byMicrosoft in May 2011 for $8.5 billion. Microsoft's Skype division headquarters are in Luxembourg, but most of the development team and 44% of the overall employees of the division are still situated in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.
About Estonia[]
The Republic of Estonia is divided into fifteen counties, which are the administrative subdivisions of the country. The first documented reference to Estonian political and administrative subdivisions comes from
the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, written in the thirteenth century during the Northern Crusades.
A county is the biggest administrative subdivision. The county government of each county is led by a county governor, who represents the national government at the regional level. Governors are appointed by the Government of Estonia for a term of five years. Several changes were made to the borders of counties after Estonia became independent, most notably the formation of Valga County (from parts of Võru, Tartu and Viljandicounties) and Petseri County (area acquired from Russia with the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty).
History[]
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and the Wehrmacht crossed the Estonian southern border on 7 July. The Red Army retreated behind the Pärnu River –Emajõgi line on 12 July. At the end of July the Germans resumed their advance in Estonia working in tandem with the Estonian Forest Brothers. Both German troops and Estonian partisans took Narva on 17 August and the Estonian capital Tallinn on 28 August. After the Soviets were driven out from Estonia, German troops disarmed all the partisan groups.
Although initially the Germans were welcomed by most Estonians as liberators from the USSR and its repressions, and hopes were raised for the restoration of the country's independence, it was soon realised that the Nazis were but another occupying power. The Germans used Estonia's resources for their war effort; for the duration of the occupation Estonia was incorporated into the German province of Ostland. The Germans and their collaborators also carried out The Holocaust in Estonia in which they established a network of concentration camps and murdered tens of thousands of Estonian Jews and Estonian Gypsies, other Estonians, non-Estonian Jews, and Soviet prisoners of war.
Some Estonians, unwilling to side directly with the Nazis, joined the Finnish Army (which was allied with the Nazis) to fight against the Soviet Union. The Finnish Infantry Regiment 200 (Estonian: soomepoisid) was formed out of Estonian volunteers in Finland. Although many Estonians were recruited into the German armed forces (including Estonian Waffen-SS), the majority of them did so only in 1944 when the threat of a new invasion of Estonia by the Red Army had become imminent. In January 1944 Estonia was again facing the prospect of invasion from the Red Army and the last legitimate prime minister of the Republic of Estonia (according to the Constitution of the Republic of Estonia) delivered a radio address asking all able-bodied men born from 1904 through 1923 to report for military service. The call resulted in around 38,000 new enlistments and several thousand Estonians who had joined the Finnish Army came back to join the newly formed Territorial Defense Force, assigned to defend Estonia against the Soviet advance. It was hoped that by engaging in such a war Estonia would be able to attract Western support for Estonian independence.
Estonia vikings (battles and raids)[]
Saxo Grammaticus describes the Estonians and Curonians as participating in the Battle of Bråvalla on the side of theSwedes against the Danes, who were aided by the Livonians and the Wends of Pomerania. Other Baltic tribes — i.e., theLetts and Lithuanians — are not mentioned by Saxo as participating in the fight. Snorri Sturluson relates in his Ynglinga saga how the Swedish king Ingvar (7th century), the son of Östen and a great warrior, who was forced to patrol the shores of his kingdom fighting Estonian Vikings. The saga speaks of his invasion of Estonia where he fell in a battle against the men of Estland who had come down with a great army. After the battle, King Ingvar was buried close to the seashore in Estonia and
the Swedes returned home.
According to Heimskringla sagas, in the year 967 the Norwegian Queen Astrid escaped with her son, later king of NorwayOlaf Tryggvason from her homeland to Novgorod, where her brother Sigurd held an honoured position at the court ofPrince Vladimir. On their journey, Oeselian Vikings raided the ship, killing some of the crew and taking others into slavery. Six years later, when Sigurd Eirikson traveled to Estonia to collect taxes on behalf of Valdemar, he spotted Olaf in a market on Saaremaa and paid for his freedom.
A battle between Oeselian and Icelandic Vikings off Saaremaa is described in Njál's saga as occurring in
972 AD.
About 1008, Olaf II Haraldsson, later king of Norway, landed on Saaremaa. The Oeselians, taken by surprise, had at first tried to negotiate the demands made by the Norwegians, but then gathered an army and confronted them. Nevertheless Olaf (who was 12 or 13 years old) won the battle.
Around the year 1030, a Swedish Viking chief called Freygeirr may have been killed in a battle on Saaremaa.
According to the Novgorod Chronicle, Varyag Ulf (Uleb) from Novgorod was crushed by Estonians in a sea battle close to the town of Lindanise in 1032.
From the 12th century, chroniclers' descriptions of Estonian, Oeselian and Curonianraids along the coasts of Sweden and Denmark become more frequent.
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia describes a fleet of sixteen ships and five hundred Oeselians ravaging the area that is now southern Sweden, then belonging to Denmark. In the XIVth book of Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus describes a battle on Öland in 1170 in which the Danish king Valdemar I mobilised his entire fleet to curb the incursions of Couronian and Estonian pirates.
Perhaps the most renowned raid by Oeselian pirates occurred in 1187, with the attack on the Swedish town of Sigtuna by Finnic raiders fromCouronia and Oesel. Among the casualties of this raid was the Swedish archbishop Johannes. The city remained occupied for some time, contributing to the decline as a center of commerce in the 13th century in favor of Uppsala, Visby, Kalmar and Stockholm.
The Livonian Chronicle describes the Oeselians as using two kinds of ships, the piratica and the liburna. The former was a warship, the latter mainly a merchant ship. A piratica could carry approximately 30 men and had a high prow shaped like a dragon or a snakehead as well as a quadrangular sail.
Viking-age treasures from Estonia mostly contain silver coins and bars. Compared to its close neighbors, Saaremaa has the richest finds of Viking treasures afterGotland in Sweden. This strongly suggests that Estonia was an important transit country during the
Viking era.
