Estonia has survived centuries of invasions and occupations from the Vikings, Germans, Swedes, Danes and Russians. In 1918 they declared independence from Russia. In the 1940s they were successively annexed by USSR, occupied by Germany and then forcibly incorporated into USSR. In 1991 Estonia regained her freedom from the Soviet Union and in 1994 the Russian Army finally left.  Estonia joined both NATO and the EU in the spring of 2004, formally joined the OECD in late 2010, and adopted the €uro as its official currency at the beginning of 2011.

Talinn
By the end of the 13th century Talinn had become the northernmost member of the Hanseatic League – the merchant alliance of Germanic cities in northern Europe. In 1346 the Danes sold Tallinn and their other land in northern Estonia to the Teutonic Knights. Mediæval Tallinn, a well-fortified town, enjoyed a strategic position at the crossroads of trade between western and northern Europe and Russia.