Estonia

Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, bordered by the Gulf of Finland, the Baltic Sea, Latvia and Russia, with a territory including the islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa among more than 2,300 others, and Tallinn as its capital, home to nearly 1.4 million people who speak Estonian, a Finnic language. Inhabited since at least 9000 BC, Estonia's medieval indigenous population was among the last pagan civilizations in Europe to adopt Christianity, following the Northern Crusades in the thirteenth century, and after centuries of rule by the Teutonic Order, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and the Russian Empire, a distinct Estonian national identity gained momentum during the mid-nineteenth century Age of Awakening, culminating in the 1918 Estonian Declaration of Independence. Estonia was invaded, occupied and annexed into the USSR during the Second World War, but its de jure state continuity was preserved by diplomatic representatives and a government-in-exile until the 1988-1990 Singing Revolution restored full independence on 20 August 1991, after which Estonia joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. It is today a democratic unitary parliamentary republic with a high-income, advanced economy and Eurozone membership, ranking among the least corrupt countries in the world and very high in education, human development, press freedom and technology.