The coast of Esthonia is rocky, but the interior of the country is very marshy, though there are no navigable rivers or lakes of much importance except Lake Peipus, which we have already mentioned. Small lakes, however, are very numerous, the largest being Lake Virts.
Esthonia was one of the countries conquered during the Middle Ages by the crusading German Knights of the Sword, and has been described as a country with a Finnish population and a German aristocracy under Russian rule. Occasionally we meet with reminiscences of oppression by the German nobility in the songs and tales; as, for instance, in the story of the Royal Herd-boy; while everything beautiful or above the ordinary life of the peasants is characterised as Saxon.
The bulk of the population speak a language very closely allied to Finnish, and they possess a large store of oral literature, much of which has been collected, and in part published, during the present century. It has, however, attracted very little attention out of Esthonia, except in Finland, and to some extent in Germany, and very few articles on the subject have appeared in England or France. It is believed that this is the first work published in England giving any detailed account of the popular literature of Esthonia, and it does not pretend to be exhaustive, nor to extend much beyond the publication of Kreutzwald, Neus, and Jannsen.
The Finnish-Ugrian race, though not Aryan, is widely distributed throughout Europe and Asiatic Russia, and the principal peoples belonging to it in the North are the Finns, the Esthonians, and the Lapps, who speak very similar languages, and whose tales and legends possess much similarity, while in the south the Magyars are more distantly related to them. The Lapp hero-tales, however, have more of a historical basis, while the popular tales are much shorter and less artistic. It is, however, curious that Swan-maiden stories are peculiarly common among the Lapps. Several other lesser known peoples belong to the same race, whom we need not further notice.
Esthonian abounds in dialects, but is so close to Finnish that it bears almost the same relation to it as Lowland Scotch to English, or perhaps as Danish to Swedish. But there is a strong admixture of German words in Esthonian, and their tales, when exhibiting traces of foreign influence, have apparently derived it from Germany. In Finnish tales, on the contrary, Russian influence is often very apparent.
The orthography is a little unsettled, words like Ukko or Kalev being often written with a single or double consonant, as Uko or Kallev; while words like Käpä are often written with double vowels, as Kääpä.
The pronunciation of most of the letters resembles that of English, or, in the case of the vowels, German, and calls for no special remark.
j, as in nearly all languages except English and French, corresponds to our y.
v is printed either v or w in Finnish and Esthonian, but corresponds to our v, and is thus used by the best Finnish authorities. Of course the Germans properly write it w, their w corresponding to our v.
For the modified vowels we have no exact equivalent in English; ä and ü are pronounced nearly as in German; but the õ may roughly be said to resemble our ee in sound. y has somewhat of a u sound, as in the Scandinavian languages; and, as in these too, the modified vowels are placed at the end of the alphabet, but in the following order: ü, ä, õ. Musical as is Finnish itself, Esthonian is still softer, as may be seen in the dropping of final consonants, as Vanemuine for Väinämöinen; and in such words as kannel (harp) for kantele. As in most parts of Northern Europe, the Gothic character is still much used in Finland and Esthonia, especially in literary works.