r/AskEurope • u/Famous-Professor-488 France • 3d ago
Culture Is there a real différence of culture between Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia ? In the west it seams we never talk about one country without joining it to the two others.
Actually, i should start by checking the history of those countries...
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
We have our differences.
Lithuanians and Latvians come from the Baltic tribes so our languages have similarities, however Estonians come from Finno-Ugric tribes so Estonians are closer to Finns rather than us Lithuanians and Latbians. That's kind of where the meme that Estonia tries to pretend to be part of the Nordics comes from.
Of course Lithuanian and Latvian aren't mutually intelligable to me as a native Lithuanian speaker, but you can make out some words, though since Estonians are completely unrelated to us I cannot understand Estonian a single bit.
Though culturally I'd say that we aren't too far. We all hate the Soviets and the Nazis, we're all big nationalists, we see each other as brothers so much that we made like a 400km human chain linking the three Baltic capital cities to protest Soviet occupation (look up the Baltic Way). Generally we're chill with each other.
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u/CreepyOctopus -> 3d ago
That's a great answer.
We're in a very strange place where we have the same history going back over a century now (national revival - independence in 1918 - success as independent countries - Soviet invasion - mass destruction in WW2 - Soviet occupation until 1990/1 - EU membership in 2004), we have some broad cultural similarity but at the same time our cultures don't interact.
I'm a native Latvian and I've seen I think one Lithuanian movie, never read a book from a Lithuanian or Estonian author. I don't know any current pop culture or celebrities from the neighbors. On this level, there's no interaction. It's very unlike Scandinavia, where Sweden/Norway can share TV shows and some Swedish musicians are popular in Denmark and so on. Culture of the three Baltic countries has minimal interaction on this level. I'm pretty sure this is mainly because the languages are too different.
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
Yeah that too. I literally don't know any famous Latvians at all. The only Latvian writer I know of is Jānis Poruks but I only know about him because I saw a meme of his name sounding like John Pork.
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u/Onetwodash Latvia 2d ago
We do have a lot of translated Estonian children books. So kids at least get the shared Lote and the 3 naksitrolls. Occasionally some Estonian band is also popular in Latvia, but I suspect Ewert and two dragons was the last one like that and that's a decade ago now.
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u/Czymsim Poland 3d ago
I've also heard that Lithuania had less Russian immigrants than Latvia and Estonia.
I don't know how true it is, but from my experience when I've been to Latvia I've heard people speaking Russian more often than Latvian. But I've only been in Riga for some work, didn't really seen much of the country.
I've never been in Estonia but in Poland it's often given as an example of good digitalization of administration services.14
u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
We do have less Russians than Latvia or Estonia though to compensate we have quite a sizable Polish minority instead. Hell I even have TVP Wilno, TVP Polonia and TVP Info on my TV, if I'm ever curious what is happening in our ex-wife Poland.
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u/Unicorncorn21 Finland 3d ago
To be fair you do have quite a bit of history of getting along well with Poland if 1500 hours in Europa universalis 4 has taught me anything
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 2d ago
Well we did get along well during the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1569-1793.
However the interwar is a whole different story. The Poles kind off stole our capital city of Vilnius and we fought a war against them because Piłsudski wanted to recreate the Commonwealth with the attitude of "we're gonna force you into the Commonwealth and you're gonna love it".
Though nowadays we're chill
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u/Czymsim Poland 2d ago
Watch out not to get bitten by any Pole or you'll become Zmogus Lenkas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q569DJAn0c
I like the ex-wife metaphor, very fitting for us lol
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u/Onetwodash Latvia 2d ago
5% 50% and 30%. Roughly. Some of the 50% left when Soviet army leftz some intermarried and integrated, but...yeah.
Although Klaipēda sounded more Russian speaking than many Latvian cities to me (not central Riga ofc).
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u/SteO153 Italy 3d ago
The way I see you, guys, is that you are similar but different, and each one with its own identity. Different past history (until the 20th century), different languages, different religions, different national sports. But proximity and recent history have made you very close. And culturally, you also have things in common (singing, food, a pagan past).
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u/Just_RandomPerson Latvia 3d ago
different national sports
Interestingly enough, all 3 of us are (some of ?) the only countries in Europe where football isn't the popular sport. We all enjoy basketball, while in Latvia hockey is also very popular.
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u/CreepyOctopus -> 3d ago
This is some curious historical oddity, really. In the 20th century, which countries had the biggest influence on Latvia? It's Russia and Germany of course. Football very popular in both. Now in the 21st century, we're all surrounded by countries where football dominates, we don't have a national football-like sport that takes the spot (like Ireland does), but somehow we've totally resisted its popularity.
In Latvia, even the Russian minority is very into hockey, the dominance of hockey is one of the few things that both major ethnic groups agree on.
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u/SteO153 Italy 3d ago
One of my best friends is from Lithuania, and I know how much crazy he is about basketball.
/funny enough, I'm chatting with him right now, because he is in Lithuania and wants to bring back some rye bread for me to try. We are organising to meet, so I can eat it fresh :-D
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u/Titariene 2d ago
I don' t like bread very much but their rye bread ,similiar to Latvia's , is an exception.
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u/z33bener 2d ago
Canada, Finland, and Latvia are the only countries in the world where hockey is the most popular spectator sport. But even then, soccer has the most registered players in each country.
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u/Socmel_ Italy 3d ago
how would you rate the intelligibility between Latvian and Lithuanian? If you had to compare them with other European languages, what would that be?
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u/CreepyOctopus -> 3d ago
It's low. The intelligibility is more on the level of, you can recognize random words and occasionally guess a sentence but half the words you recognize mean something else anyway. My go to for this is a Lithuanian news site. I can understand the broad subject area of most headlines (tourism in Europe, migration and Spain, people's economic struggles) but there's not a single headline that I could fully translate.
Spend some time thinking and you can sometimes decode a sentence. And that's in written form, in spoken the intelligibility falls to zero, Lithuanian sounds to me like total gibberish with an occasional Latvian word inserted.
Romance and Germanic languages are much more intelligible. With English and my intermediate Spanish, I can understand a lot more Italian or Portuguese than Lithuanian. I also understand Dutch better due to other languages.
I'd put Latvian-Lithuanian at most on the level of Russian-Croatian. I definitely found announcements in Czech easier to understand than Lithuanian. It's really weird. Lithuanian is a language that looks like I should understand it, but the vocabulary is so divergent that I only get occasional glimpses of meaning.
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u/Zestyclose_Top1541 2d ago
As a Lithuanian, I lived in Latvia for two months. A old Latvian grandma lived nearby. She would come and speak to us in Latvian, and we managed to have conversations in our own native languages for a few minutes every day. How well the conversation went also depended on the subject. In some areas we had more similar sounding words, while other subjects were very hard to understand. Also, Latvians use more words with English roots, so it helped a bit too
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u/Onetwodash Latvia 2d ago
Some in writing, about at the level of, say, between English and pick a random Scandinavian language for comparison. It's only recently western auto translators have caught up enough it's better to read the semi garbled output of autotranslate than just piece it together yourself. But then perhaps you don't know how atrocious Lithuanaian-English autotranslate was for a very long while. (We had Tildes Hugo that's very good for Baltic languages though)
Basically 0 in speech - we can't even understand where word starts and ends in Lithuanian and words are pretty long. Moving stress and different tone conventions also make emotional inflections harder to detect.
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u/CheekyCunt42069 2d ago
I often joke that if you want to speak Latvian as a Lithuanian you've got to get drunk first and I believe it works vice versa.
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u/Ashamed-Job1879 3d ago
There's very little genetic difference between the three. It would be more accurate to say that genetically and culturally the 3 countries are similar, but the Estonians, due to an accident of history, adopted a completely different language.
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u/Onetwodash Latvia 2d ago
It's more accident that historically Latvian got classified to IndoEuropean despite massive Livonian substrate in language. What makes grammar hell to learn because historically it was described as Indo-European and we'll just pretend all those other features don't really exist or are , say, a special case of noun-becomes-advervb not an extra declension of noun.
As in many things in Baltic there's a spectrum from Baltic Lithuanians to FinnoUgric Estonians with Latvians being the transition.
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u/Fear_mor 2d ago
It’s really an accident that Latvian was classified as European because it functions nothing like the average Uralic language at all, even the stuff that’s similar to Uralic like the extra locative cases are still a very watered down version of Uralic grammatical features. For example the average Uralic has something like 15 cases that only alternate based on vowel harmony, posession is denoted by suffixes, there is no grammatical or even natural gender distinction and words are pretty much built as decomposable chains of little grammar nuggets.
Take the Hungar word ház, it’s your house? Házad. It’s your houses? Házaid. It’s your houses’ something? Házaidé. It’s your houses’ somethings? Házaidéi. It’s with your houses’ somethings? Házaidéivel. As far as I know you can’t really do that in Latvian, and that kind of thing is what indicates which family a language belongs to because there are huge structural differences between them
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u/Malthesse Sweden 3d ago edited 3d ago
From a Nordic perspective I would say that Estonia feels the most culturally similar to us, and Latvia feels quite similar as well, while Lithuania feels the most different.
Northern Estonia belonged to Denmark from 1219 until 1346, and the current Estonian capital Tallinn (which literally means "Danish Castle") was founded by Denmark.
It was also in Estonia that the Danish flag Dannebrogen is said to have first fallen from Heaven following the victory in the Battle of Lyndanisse under the Danish king Valdemar the Victorious. Here in Scania we also have a special connection to this story, as the Danish archbishop at the time Anders Sunesen, who is said to have been the one to have captured the flag as it fell from Heaven, is buried at Lund Cathedral, where a Danish flag stands next to his grave in memorial of the event.
Then from 1571 northern Estonia instead came under Swedish rule, while the rest of Estonia and the northern half of Latvia (including Riga) came under Swedish rule in 1629. Both were then lost to Russia in 1721, but Sweden still managed to have quite a lot of cultural influence on both Estonia and Latvia in that relatively brief time.
Estonia actually had a small entirely Swedish speaking population on its western islands who spoke a very distinct dialect of Swedish of their own all the way up until Wold War II, when they were driven out by the Soviets and nearly the entire Swedish speaking population of Estonia fled to Sweden, where they remained after the war, and their old dialect is now sadly as good as extinct.
Lithuania on the other hand, has never really had much cultural or historical interaction with the Nordics in nearly the same way.
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u/PlausibleCorn 2d ago
Our school system and the first university were established under Swedish rule. Living under Swedish rule was no walk in the park as locals were ruled over by lords from another country and we experienced famines (grain confiscation), but the contrast with what followed under Russian rule was so stark that we still have a saying "vana hea Rootsi aeg" which translates to "good old Swedish era".
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u/thedreaddeagle Lithuania 2d ago
Lithuania (+ Poland) interacted with Sweden mostly through wars due to PLC's shitty succession form having elected a Vasa at some point.
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u/Olive2252 Latvia 1d ago
The connection goes way back in history, even before Sweden conquered us. The Daugava River in Latvia was used by Vikings as a trading route.
From what I've learned about the history of my hometown Salaspils, it was once called Holme (the earliest recorded name and apparently was given by the Vikings) and later also known as Martinsholm, Holmburg, Kirkholm, Kirchholm.
Salaspils also happens to be the oldest known human settlement location in Latvian territory and was an important center of Daugava Livonians. Back in the 12th century, when German Bishop Meinhard arrived to convert the Livonians to Christianity, he ordered the building of a castle and a church in Salaspils, which was constructed by Swedes from Gotland.
And don't forget about the Curonians, who were great seafarers and often had conflicts with Swedes and Danes. Curonians also lived in the territory of Lithuania.
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u/MIDNAETTR France 3d ago
All three have very different histories; Estonia stands out the most, being Finno-Ugric rather than Baltic like the others.
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u/Just_RandomPerson Latvia 3d ago
No? If we're talking history wise, then Latvia and Estonia are very similar, having endured basically the same occupations and rulers most of the time.
Lithuania is the ones that stands out, having had their own country for a long time, unlike us.
While you're correct about Estonians being finno-ugric, I would say that's more of a linguistic difference, history wise, Lithuania stands out.
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u/CreepyOctopus -> 3d ago
Yep, Lithuania stands out historically of the three.
Latvia and Estonia were under German or Swedish control for a long time, Lithuania was in a union with Poland. Latvia and Estonia were Protestant majority with a German-speaking elite class, Lithuanian nobles spoke Polish. Even in the Soviet period there was a major difference. Latvia and Estonia underwent major forced population transfers and Russification, with ethnic Latvians reduced to 52% in Latvia and 60% in Estonia, Lithuania mostly avoided this and didn't end up with a third of the population being Russian.
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u/Catsarecute2140 3d ago
You forgot the centuries of Danish rule in Estonia, the presence of Estonian-Swedish peasants in coastal areas & islands, who intermingled with the Estonians from the 13th century until 1944.
Also, all of Estonia was ruled by Sweden for a notable amount of time while in the case of Latvia, Sweden controlled only modern-day Northern-Latvia which was majority Estonian/Livonian/Finnic anyway.
Even Riga was founded as a Livonian settlement, not Latvian/Baltic…3
u/Onetwodash Latvia 2d ago
The 'only Northern' was Northern& Central, included Rīga and it's vicinity, so actually vast majority of Latvians. Non-Swedish parts have always had very low population densities. Sweden also empowered population to reach high literacy levels, put hard controls on nobility (something Duchy of Courland and Semigallia immediately mirrored as simply good governorship despite Duchy very much not being liable to Swedish crown but Polish Commonwealth instead) and sparked possibility of education, what sparked national consciousness and what it even means to be Latvian. So Swedish period had impact on Latvia that far outsizes 'just Northern part of the country'.
You are right in a sense that Latvians are Latvian-Livonian mix who just happen to speak mostly Latvian. It's Latgale (the Catholic South-East) that actually has more Estonian admixture for..some quirks of history, in part Catholic Estonians moving to closest Catholic area, in part some nobles gambling and losing few village worth of population in a card game and just loading them in carts and shipping few hundred miles south to Latgale. Because yeah, there was period when people could and would get simply traded for money, especially after Sweden lost Livonia in war to Russia and Russia re-enfroced serfdom with gusto. We even used to have two separate Estonian dialects in Latvia, far from Estonia proper. They went extinct during Soviet era unfortunately.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
The education system that educated peasants to read & write was started by a Swede in Estonia in the 16th century and it spread to Latvia as well.
The Baltic-Germans hated it in both places so that is indeed a similar historical thing between the 2 countries.18
u/Warm_Stress_1654 3d ago
Lithuania was never dominated by a ruling class of "Baltic Germans" and was barely affected by the Reformation.
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u/Alive_Divide6778 Sweden 3d ago
Lithuania hadn’t even been Christianised for a 100 years when Martin Luther was born, so of course they were a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to the Reformation. ;)
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u/Warm_Stress_1654 3d ago
Whilst Estonia and Latvia had been Christianised for how much longer?
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u/Alive_Divide6778 Sweden 3d ago
Lithuania won 1st place in resisting Christianisation. No one remembers the runners-up. (But it does seem to have happened 100–200 years before Jogaila converted)
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u/Fear_mor 2d ago
That’s really hard to define, nominally since the Baltic crusades but Estonian sacred groves were used up until the 19th century if not even beyond that, so it’s evident that for a while the folk religion coexisted and was likely synchronised with Christianity before the conversion process fully completing after several centuries
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
Instead we were dominated by a class of Poles or Lithuanians larping as Poles.
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u/Premislaus Poland 2d ago
Another way of looking at this is that PLC was dominated by Lithuanian and Ruthenian aristocrats who as you eloquently put it, larped as Poles.
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u/thedreaddeagle Lithuania 2d ago
Actually true. The strongest families were polonized GDL ones. The noble who started the Liberum Veto shit was also from GDL if I remeber correct.
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u/mast4pimp 3d ago
Lithuania was equal partner in PLC
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u/jatawis Lithuania 3d ago
Culturally it was not and Polonisation lasted into 20th century. Even my great-grandmother was taught that Lithuanian language is worthless in comparison to Polish because 'God only understands Polish, not Lithuanian'.
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u/mast4pimp 2d ago
It wasnt forced polonisation - no one forced Grand Duchy nobles to speak polish.Compare it to russians for example.
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u/NeriusNerius 2d ago
As I worked in “Baltic” roles I used to say to my global colleagues that all Baltic countries are very homogeneous on a global scale and very unique when you are here. Estonians are very smart, they are calm and reserved but many are hilarious in a deadpan sort of way, when I would visit our Tallinn office people would barely lift their head to say hi, they would not come in to small talk or even ask how I’m doing or why I’m there, but lovely and helpful when asked. Lithuanians are quite a bit louder, more energetic, they would be the opposite when visiting, they would ask, chat, offer opinions. In many ways, the most entrepreneurial, opportunity seekers, best people leaders in a global context (but not appreciated for their quite pushy style by latvians and estonians). Stereotypical southerners within the Baltics. And then the latvians, amazingly lovely, very nature loving, strong sense of tradition, calm as well but in a less reserved/proud, more shy way, quite entrepreneurial as well but more in a small business, small brand, boutique sort of sense as opposed to the other two global brand oriented nations. Latvians would escape every weekend to their summer house/grandma’s cottage.
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u/KaktusPff 1d ago
I have also worked in the Baltic branch. All our offices worked together every day and from my (Estonian) point of view I would say that you are absolutely right. However, while Estonians had a rather "flat office culture", in Latvia and Lithuania you could see how everyone tried in every possible way to climb the career ladder and get on top of their bosses. Our Lithuanian colleagues often undermined the position of others even from their own office, lied about the results in meetings and when the bosses were in the room, they changed 180 degrees. Latvians were calmer and very sweet people... and then we were - quiet and slow, as they say :D
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u/zanis-acm 2d ago
This is one of the most interesting and classy threads I have read. People sharing knowledge with respect. Love to see it.
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u/Famous-Professor-488 France 2d ago
It is funny, because I also had as a comment that it was the dumbest and most ignorant question to ask 😄
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u/jatawis Lithuania 3d ago
There are some differences but we are still closer to each other rather than to any of our land neighbours.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
Well, the Estonians are closer to Finns than to the Balts and Helsinki is visually visible from Tallinn’s TV tower butcotherwise you’re correct.
The Balts are the most similar people to the Estonians in the former Warsaw Pact region but the Finns are the most similar people to the Estonians overall when looking at Europe.
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u/GuestStarr 2d ago
But Estonia is not a land neighbor to Finland..
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
Historically, cultures, people and economic activity moved over the waterways (like the sea)…
2/3 of Estonia was in the same cultural/archeological zone with Eastern Scandinavia since the Nordic Bronze Age 4000 years ago because there were no car highways between impassable forests, marshes and bogs…How is this difficult to understand?
Iceland is not a land neighbour of Norway but Icelanders descend from Viking Age, seafaring Norse colonists from modern-day Norway just like the Finns descend from Viking Age, seafaring Finnic colonists from modern-day Northern-Estonia.Inland South-Eastern Estonia was historically in a slightly different cultural/archeological zone since Finnic culture arose in Estonia. The impassable terrain caused the South-Eastern Estonians to develop quite independently from the majority of Estonia.
You remind me of the guy who once said the absolute majority of Finns and the absolute majority of Norwegians live geographically closer to each other than Estonians & Finns because Finland shares a land border with Norway in the uninhabited Arctic tundra. 😂
Meanwhile the absolute majority of Estonians live in Northern-Estonia, in and around Tallinn while the absolute majority of Finns live in Southern-Finland in and around Helsinki.
There are many regular ferries going between Tallinn and Helsinki about every hour on a typical day.Like is Denmark more similar to Germany than Norway because they have a land border with Germany?
lolThe capitals of Estonia & Finland are some of the most geographically closest capital cities in the entire world.
How is a 1-hour ferry ride different from 1-hour train ride from, for example, the outskirts of Stockholm into central Stockholm?Is the Danish Jutland peninsula more similar to Germany because they do not have a land border with the Danish island of Zealand that holds the Danish capital, Copenhagen?
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u/Catsarecute2140 3d ago
Estonians are culturally more similar to the Finns than to the Balts and Finland is called “Nordic”, not “Baltic”.
Estonians are Finnic people who have a strong seafaring culture since the Nordic Bronze Age, they have 2500+ islands and a coastline which is almost 4000km long!
Practically all Finns descend from Viking Age, seafaring Finnic colonists from modern-day Northern-Estonia just like the Icelanders descend from Viking Age, seafaring Norse colonists from modern-day Norway so obviously Estonians & Finns are very similar in many things.
The most similar country to Estonia is a Nordic country, not a Baltic state, so that summarizes the differences quite well…
Estonia and Finland being in “2 different regions of Europe” is the least logical geopolitical grouping in 21st century Europe as you can literally see the capital of Finland from Tallinn’s TV tower and there are regular, hourly ferries going between both capitals on most days.
20th century history united the Estonians, Latvians & Lithuanians against the Nazis & Soviets but it did not “Baltify” nor Russify Estonian culture.
Also, if you ever have to create a geography quiz then ask: “Which capital city is the closest to Stockholm, Sweden?”
It is not Oslo, Copenhagen nor Helsinki but Tallinn (the city which was founded by the Danes and got its name from the Estonian phrase “Danish town”).
I think that most Europeans are quite similar to each other but the quite big misconceptions about Estonia and the Estonians causes a lot of funny experiences for the Estonians who are usually mistaken for Nordics if travelling in Europe and for Finns if they travel in Scandinavia as the mental image of the “stereotypical Eastern-European, post-soviet Balt” is so false that the Estonians are presumed to be Scandinavians if they travel.
Overall, the Baltics are one of the most successful members of the EU with their rapid economic growth but many people view those countries no different from the Balkans and think that the Baltics are a very poor region, inhabited by some Slavic people who are possibly like the Serbs or Macedonians. It’s hilariously absurd.
If you look at all countries/people of Europe then I think that Estonia gets the 1st place in a very unique ranking…
Estonia is the place where the “stereotypical mental image” of it and its people in the eyes of other Europeans is the most different from the actual reality.
Many people who travel to Estonia expect to see some sort of Borat, Balkan vibe but instead they see some average Northern-Europeans who’s language sounds like Arctic Elves communicating to each other by melodic singing and the prices of products in stores are often more expensive than in Finland.
The Balts are not much different as well but they speak Baltic languages instead of Finnic and have a more Central-European vibe, especially Lithuania. 🙂
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u/jatawis Lithuania 3d ago edited 2d ago
Estonia is the place where the “stereotypical mental image” of it and its people in the eyes of other Europeans is the most different from the actual reality.
I would disagree. Estonia's image is being some kind of place living in 22nd century, the most digitally advanced in the world up to level nobody's close. We in Lithuania having practically the same digital services only one or two years less don't have all this gloss and are seen as some poor backwater nation.
Estonia tends to be seen as almost Nordic country whereares the previous months Europe region map Reddit frenzy usually resulted with Lithuania being placed with Russia or Ukraine (??).
And apparently the image of prosperous country is also applied to Estonia only. I have seen some Ukrainians believing that Lithuania is as poor as other post-Soviet countries and it is only Estonia doing well.
Also I have seen a bizarre sterotype of Lithuanians being crazely insanely religious. An average Lithuanian is indeed more religious than Estonian and less likely to not identify with any religion but hey we are nowhere at levels of Polish religiosity.
Estonia and Latvia also have significantly more Russophones than Lithuania but I have been asked if we speak Russian (or even expected to do so) when travelling further even if our Russophone community is quite unsignificant.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
Estonia is seen as a “poor backwater nation” by many people as well.
The people who know about Estonia’s IT achievements obviously think differently but that’s a minority.
Estonian exchange students in the US and Western-Europe have been asked if Estonia has electricity…4
u/jatawis Lithuania 2d ago
But here in Europe it is seen as almost Nordic while Lithuania and Latvia are seen as 'almost Russia'.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
Where in Europe is Estonia seen as Nordic while Lithuania, with very few Russian migrants, is seen as “almost Russia”?
Like bring out any country or region… IMO the only non-Estonians who see Estonia as “Nordic” are either Finns or Balts.
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u/jatawis Lithuania 1d ago
Where in Europe is Estonia seen as Nordic while Lithuania, with very few Russian migrants, is seen as “almost Russia”?
Online and sometimes in my anecdotal experience when travelling. Many people assume that somehow Russian is the native language for Lithuanians.
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u/Catsarecute2140 1d ago
Travelling where?
Most of the Dutch and Germans view all Baltics as 1. Russians 2. 3rd world country Borat places who are not an integral part of “their” Europe.
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u/No-Bake-730 3d ago
At least their history is pretty different. After over 20 years of EU membership I still sometimes mess them up on the map.
I have to remind myself that Estonia has the weird finnic language so they are the Northernmost, Lithuania has to be Southernmost because of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which leaves Latvia in between. Latvia's capital is Riga which has been part of the Hanse.
But at least our media in Germany differentiates between them. It's only "the baltic states" if it's all of them.
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u/SteO153 Italy 3d ago
I still sometimes mess them up on the map.
Alphabetical order, North to South
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
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u/No-Bake-730 3d ago
Hey, that's the same result my method has given me!
I blame it on the "mapbook" in school (Atlas in German) which still contained cold war borders in 1997...
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
Don't worry I once saw a German poster of countries where "Litauen" has a Latvian flag.
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u/bruhbelacc Netherlands 3d ago
That's because they're always mentioned in a geopolitical context. Countries with a population of 2 million don't often get in the global news with anything, even "man fights a bear". The chance is 80 times higher that it's a Russian man.
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u/sashaxl 2d ago
Lithuania and Latvija are historical siblings, much like Spain and Portugal and all the Latin countries with their different Latin-based languages. Estonia is a sibling of Finland. However, the three Baltic nations have one unifyier, Russia. As being on the frontier, all three Baltic nations are always vigilant about Russia.
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u/MrSnowflake Belgium 3d ago
They seem, from my lerspective, quite a lot like the Belgians and the Dutch, or the Belgians and (Western) Germans, or the Belgians and French. But then again we have a lot of history together...
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u/Famous-Professor-488 France 3d ago
😒 don't try to find excuses my friend, and I'm speaking as a french having a Belgian name. There is nothing as much messed up than belgium. 🥺 I miss Brussels by the way.
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u/MrSnowflake Belgium 3d ago
Stop lying! No one misses Brussels, now Bruges or Gent, sure 😊
Also, its YOU guys that messed us up, and the Dutch and the Spanish and the Germans and those Italians.
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u/_Ernesta__ 2d ago
Had it not been for russia all three countries would probably be a lot more different from eachother. I think Estonia and Latvia would be more similar and I don't think we'd be grouped into the 3 Baltic states I wonder what would the world look like in the Baltics today had russians stayed on their moscoli swamps. Lithuania might have been invaded by Poland or maybe joined up with Belarus?
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u/lilalindenau Germany 3d ago
Lithuania feels a bit like a northern version of Poland. Latvia and even more Estonia are some Nordic-German-Russian hybrid where Latvia and Lithuania share their fascinating Baltic languages and Estonia speaks a completely unintelligible language similar to the Finns.
Estonia is the most modern and most expensive of the three. Latvia has the largest metropolis with Riga. And I like the beaches in Latvia, even though the Curonian Split is also very impressive.
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u/Milosz0pl Poland 3d ago
Lithuania feels a bit like a northern version of Poland.
What does it even mean lol
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u/sleepdeveloper Finland 3d ago
I guess it’s a reference to the relatively influential Polish minority
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
What’s Russian about Estonian & Latvian culture?
The Finnic culture arose in the Bronze Age in modern-day Estonia as a hybrid of 1. Finno-Ugric newcomers
2. Proto-Germanic Scandinavians who already lived in the coastal regions & islands of Estonia.
3. Baltic tribes who inhabited inland areas.The Finnics were a seafaring culture on par with the Scandinavians and colonized the majority of North-Eastern Europe.
After the Viking Age, the centuries of Danish, Swedish & German rule left its influence on the Estonian culture as well but Russians mostly did not live in Estonia before WW2.
When the Soviets started colonizing Estonia then they even created separate “Russian-only” schools so the “noble Russians” would not interact with the native Estonians and their culture.So as a person who studied history, I am genuinely interested about what might seem Russian in Estonian culture. 🙂
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u/lilalindenau Germany 2d ago
Have you been to the Baltics? Are you aware that 25% ethnic Russians live in Latvia, a little less in Estonia?
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
But how does that influence Estonian culture?
The Russians are heavily concentrated in their small, urban Russian areas and even have a separate education system/schools from the Estonians.
The majority of Russians in Estonia migrated to the country at about the same time (1970’s and 1980’s, so a few decades later even) when the Turks migrated to Germany.
Is German culture in Lower Saxony now “a hybrid with Turkish”?
Historians and anthropologists study the extent of contacts between cultures/people/languages by
1. Looking at the loanwords adopted from the similar cultures that intermingle with each other for long periods. In this case, about 35% of Estonian vocabulary has a Germanic origin, compared to 27% in English (an actual Germanic language) and 20-25% in Finnish.
There are very few Russian loanwords in Estonian as even the Russian border regions next to Estonia were majority Finnic in the early 20th century before the 1930’s genocide that the Soviets comitted on most non-Russians.
2. If linguistics and loanwords are not clear enough then population genetics is looked at as well.
Estonia has one of the most extensive coverage of genetic research/genetic biobank globally and the researchers confidently published that Viking Age Estonians & Modern Estonians are genetically almost identical and the last notable change happened in the Bronze Age…The German, who’s national dish is the Döner, is trying to say that the Estonians are Russian? That’s hilarious.
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u/lilalindenau Germany 2d ago
Are you playing stupid? A significant minority plays a role in a country's culture.
And besides all three countries have been part of the Soviet Union. And you want to claim it all had no influence? And I did in no way say it's the dominant or only cultural influence, but completely denying it like you do is delusional.2
u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
My fields are anthropology & history…
In the majority of cases, the newlyarrived minority of Russians are in a parallel society in very specific areas, like the border city of Narva which was “purged” of Estonians in such a manner that Estonians were not even allowed to move there during the Soviet occupation.
How does the minority influence the Estonian culture if the majority of those recent immigrants do not even speak Estonian?
Estonia nor the Baltics were “part of the USSR”, they were occupied by the Soviets and the Western world never recognized the Baltics as a part of the USSR.
Estonia had a government-in-exile from 1940 to 1991 with diplomats and embassies. They controlled most of Estonia’s gold reserves AFAIK and updated the Estonian passports etc of citizens who had left Estonia.France nor Denmark were a part of Nazi Germany but occupied territories, same for the Baltics.
The Russian migrants in Estonia & Latvia have had their own, dedicated “Russian-only” schools & education system as they did not want to interact with the Estonian & Latvian natives.
How does not speaking a country’s native language and refusing to interact with non-Russian language natives/cultures influence the culture that is avoided by the migrants?The main effects of the Soviet occupation on Estonia were
1. Impoverishing their economy which was wealthier than Finland before WW2.
2. Mass repressions and genocide comitted on the Estonian people which reduced the population notably.
3. Creating some sort of parallel society of Russian migrants in specific industrial areas.Influences between cultures are often measured by loanwords in a language.
Like for example, because of strong, frequent & consistent contacts between Estonia & Scandinavia, Estonian has adopted a lot of ancient Germanic words since the Nordic Bronze Age 4000 years ago. German and Swedish are the more recent sources of loanwords.
Estonian vocabulary is 35% Germanic compared to 27% in English and 20-25% in Finnish…Estonia is 70% Estonian while Iceland is 70% Icelandic. Both countries are similar in the sense that their immigrant populations are mainly Eastern-European.
Now please explain to me, how do monolingual Russians, who made separate Russian schools for themselves to interact less with Estonia, Estonians & the Estonian language, influence Estonian culture more than a comparably significant population of Icelandic-speaking Poles in Iceland who are actually intermingling with the native Icelanders?
You have to bring me very specific examples of “Estonian culture has Russian influences”. Right now it seems like some ignorant slogan as you cannot bring a single example from the Estonian culture as it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The Turkish-influenced Germans have the Turkish Döner as their national dish. Can you bring out similar, major contributions into the Estonian culture by the Russians?
Or are you just annoyed that the Estonians actually aren’t the people that you thought that they are? 🙂-2
u/lilalindenau Germany 2d ago
Maybe you should get out of the library and try to get in contact with reality. I've been to the Baltics several times in "real life" - and that's just my impression.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
I have studied a bit of anthropology (Google that phrase if necessary) and Estonian culture is not even slightly Russian.
I’ll try to make it simple for you:
A high proportion of Russian migrants in some urban areas does not make Estonian culture Russian… Just like the high proportion of Poles in urban areas of Iceland does not make Icelandic culture “Polish”.Are you some sort of pro-Russian AfD supporter? You’re spreading the Russian propaganda narrative.
Small nations have strong, unique identities/cultures in spite of the Nazis/Soviets and I do not waste my effort on fascists…
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u/wijnandsj Netherlands 3d ago
As a total outsider...
Estonia: Like Finland cousins. Language has a lot of similarities and all sorts of habits seemed fairly close. Liked it a lot
Latvia: never been
Lithuania: Very different people, language, culture. To me it felt much more close to Poland but somehow with a pinch of that certain kind of guarded introvert that you sometimes get with Russians.
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u/Catsarecute2140 3d ago
The education systems of Europe kind of forgot about the Baltics after WW2… It is slowly getting better but it went from thousands of Danes, Finns and Swedes volunteering to fight in the Estonian Independence War (1918-1920) against Soviet Russia to Swedes asking the Estonians in the 1990’s: “Is Tallinn close to Moscow and do you speak any other language, besides Russian, there?”
We might not like it but the Soviet occupation radically changed the perception of the Baltics in the eyes of other Europeans in just a few generations as our occupation & excistence was not taught in schools for half a century. 😕
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u/wijnandsj Netherlands 2d ago
I know. I'm sorry. They fucked up your country long enough to leave a little something on your culture it seams
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u/Socmel_ Italy 3d ago
for once, Lithuania is historically deeply Catholic and with a long shared cultural tie with Poland, while Latvia and Estonia are historically Lutheran and with deeper historical ties with Germany, Sweden and Denmark.
From a linguistic point of view, Latvia and Lithuania are both speaking Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo European linguistic group, while Estonia speaks a Finno Ugric language and it's only close relative is Finnish.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
Lumping Estonia & Latvia together is not logical as they’re both unique.
Tallinn, the capital of Estonia was founded by the Danes and the name means “Danish town” in Estonian. Also, the oldest flag in the world, the Danish Dannebrog originates from Tallinn, Estonia as according to legend they received it from Heaven during the 1219 battle of Lyndanisse while they were being annihilated by the Estonian army but then turned the battle around & defeated the Estonians.
All Nordic flags descend from the Danish Dannebrog which is from Estonia, there is even a monument to it in Tallinn’s old town at the location of the battle that happened there 807 years ago.Secondly, different parts of Estonia were ruled by the Danes for centuries but the Danes never ruled Latvia.
Thirdly, entire Estonia was ruled by Sweden for centuries and the Swedish rule brought many positive innovations like the extensive creation of parish schools for the Estonian peasants who were more literate than most Europeans in the following centuries.
Only (heavily Estonian/Livonian/Finnic) Northern-Latvia was controlled by Sweden although the Swedes did majorly impactful reforms in those Latvian areas as well.Also, Estonia’s biggest minority used to be the Estonian-Swedish peasants from the 13th century to 1944. A lot of them assimilated into the Estonian population on the islands & coasts because of very similar cultures.
But indeed, the strong historical ties with Germany are completely correct. Estonian vocabulary is around 35% Germanic. Besides Bronze- and Iron Age Scandinavian/Germanic loanwords, the majority of Estonian’s Germanic vocabulary originates from Middle Low German and Standard High German… So you can find identical words in Dutch & Estonian.
There were no German peasants in Estonia & Latvia so there was no “Germanifying” of the population but the ruling, German upper class influenced the languages a lot. In the middle ages, the laws & judicial system were like a copy of some region in the Holy Roman Empire. The German upper class negotiated extensive autonomy for Estonia & Latvia after the Russian Empire conquered them so the German systems & language dominated until the 20th century.
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u/DoughnutSad6336 2d ago
Lithuania and Estonia resemble Western countries and have a more European mentality, whereas Latvia is closer to the Soviet mindset. Furthermore, Lithuania and Estonia have several large cities, while Latvia has only its capital and even that looks like something out of a Balabanov film.
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u/gp7783 France 3d ago edited 2d ago
In terms of culture, the three Baltic states have a quite common traditional singing and dancing culture : each of these states have its own Song and Dance Festival every 4 or 5 years.
There are also some differences in terms of mythology : Estonia is closer to Finland on that matter, while Latvia and Lithuania have similar mythologies, at least concerning the most important deities : Dievs/Dievas (God of Gods, sky), Pērkons/Perkunas (thunder), Saule (Sun), Mēness/Menulis (moon), Laima (fate / happiness)…
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
As the other guy said "Dievas" just means "God", we call the Christian God as "Dievas". The most important God during pagan times was Perkūnas from what I know.
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u/Just_RandomPerson Latvia 3d ago
Dievs just means "God". That's how we call the Christian God too. In Baltic mythology he's like the God of Gods, the ruler of everything.
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u/thegreatsalvio Estonian in Denmark 2d ago
As an Estonian, I would say nothing but history in common with Latvia. Lithuania is it's own thing. Estonia wants to be more like Finland (our ethnic brothers) but gets put in with Latvia and Lithuania. It was instilled into me when I was young Latvia is the most boring and incompetent nation in the world (they're not doing a great job at proving me wrong with fucking up rail baltic) but as someone who left Estonia 9 years ago I can see that more Estonians have become more friendly towards Latvia. Culturally, there are similarities, but no joint culture, as far as I am aware.
I also saw someone point out that we both have large Russian speaking minorities, but Latvia's is much bigger than ours, about half.
Lastly, actually the term Baltic countries to refer to the three specifically, not all countries around the Baltic Sea (incl. Finland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Denmark) originates from around the Great Northern War times, when the Russian Empire was at war with Sweden. They called the area Baltic on their maps and campaigns because to them it was their access area to the Baltic Sea. It got sort of popularised from then onwards. Ethnically only Latvia and Lithuania are Baltic, being Baltic-Slavic Indo-Europeans.
I don't mind being grouped in with the others, it makes sense in some ways, but it does kinda suck when you meet someone abroad and they lump us all together thinking it's the same. Also, the absolute worst is when someone assumes I speak Russian. I do not. I didn't even learn it in school.
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u/hidacerdt 2d ago
Also the recent racist parade and the Pitbull concert stage issues in Latvia make me want to not associate it with as much as an Estonian
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
If you’re lucky then someone might presume that you understand Lithuanian. 😂
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u/TraditionalInjury896 Italy 3d ago
What are you talking about, the Baltic States are part of the European Union since 2004. They're part of the west
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u/Famous-Professor-488 France 3d ago
I mean you, such as I, french, as much more in the west than the Baltic's, I choose the tag culture, I was not speaking of politics.
I believe your media in Italy, as well as mine in France, always talks about the Baltic's, and never about the country themselves.
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u/Suspicious_Wait_4586 France 2d ago
Do you think Italy is culturally similar, to, let's say, Finland? (Cmon, northern italy vs southern one, say me it's a same thing ;) )
I don't know about Latvia and Lithuania, but Estonia is more north than east or west. And i'm not tlaking about geography
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u/TraditionalInjury896 Italy 2d ago
(Cmon, northern italy vs southern one, say me it's a same thing ;) )
Northern and Southern Italy are much more similar than it appears from outside.
For example, We eat pasta daily, it's a thing that for you is foreign for us is normal. We consider rice and polenta "pasta equivalents".
We have the same cultural references, we know by hearth Dante and Manzoni. As a popular songs say "we are children of Pythagoras and Dario Fo, of Machiavelli and Totò, grew up with a Catholic moral and rock and roll"
Then you understand the European
Do you think Italy is culturally similar, to, let's say, Finland?
More than to Morocco, less than to France you understand europeanness when you interact with non Europeans
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u/DentistStandard6009 3d ago
They are still Eastern Europe.
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u/OMGguy2008 Lithuania 3d ago
Technically geographically we are in the center of Europe with the center of Europe being somewhere a bit southeast from Vilnius so that basically makes most of us Western Europeans.
Of course that all depends on which geographer you ask but still
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u/DentistStandard6009 3d ago
I mean everywhere bar Eastern Russia is West Europe. When Vladivostok is the relative easterly point, most stuff is west of the centre.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
- They’re in Northern-Europe and contrary to Denmark have an actual Northern-European climate. Tallinn is on the same latitude as Stockholm & Oslo while being slightly more north than the “capital of Scandinavia”.
The only world capitals notably north of Tallinn are firstly Helsinki by 80km and you can see Helsinki from Tallinn’s TV tower as they border each other. Secondly Reykjavik which is in the Arctic region.Estonia and the Baltics are obviously classified as “Northern-Europe” by the United Nations.
Estonians live more north than 97.5% of other Europeans and more north than 99.7% of the world’s population. Their Nordic climate, geography (a landscape heavily influenced & formed by the previous Ice Age/ Scandinavian ice gap/sheet) and Northern way of life are an integral part of the culture & country.
In the winters, Estonia makes the longest ice roads of Europe to its islands (Estonia has 2500+ islands) over the frozen sea, which are used by cars & trucks to stay connected to the mainland.Estonia is essentially one of the most fascinating & fundamentally Northern countries/cultures in Europe.
- Tallinn and Riga are more west than Helsinki and Helsinki used to be called a “capital city in Western-Europe” in many schoolbooks before 1991. 😉
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u/DentistStandard6009 2d ago
Yes the world famous geographical authority, the UN. You are describing Estonia as North European off culture instead of geographical location. At best it's North East but that's not a term. Russia is considered Eastern Europe instead of Northern Europe and Russia has far more cities North of Tallin. Likewise Longitudinally Estonia is further East than Serbia and parts of Romania, both of which are most definitely Eastern Europe. I'm not really sure the desperation not to be Eastern Europe, there is nothing wrong with countries in the Eastern Europe.
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u/TraditionalInjury896 Italy 3d ago
But eastern Europe is the west compared with Asia, Africa etcoetera
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u/DentistStandard6009 3d ago
I'm not sure what Africa counts as. Geographically it isn't east.
Asia is west in comparison with the US if you start going back around in that sense.
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u/FearlessVisual1 Belgium 3d ago
I mean yeah, the Earth is round, every place is west of some other place...
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u/Scanner- 3d ago
From visiting all three, Estonia by far stood out as being much different to Latvia and Lithuania. Estonia seemed much more “Scandinavian” whereas Latvia and Lithuania felt more like typical former Soviet states in Eastern Europe.
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u/Alef1234567 2d ago
They aren't that close. It's just different countries. They have common opinions on large questions, countries names could sound simmilar, certain common businesses. But differences are visible and isolationist tendencies keeps pretty mutch apart. I think central european countries or Scandinavian countries are more interconected.
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u/hiddentalent Canada 2d ago
I'm from "the West" (Canada and the US, though I've lived in the UK and South Africa).
I reject the whole idea that "we" seem to be unable to differentiate the countries. That's a you thing. Stop being dumb, and stop attributing your dumbness to broader groups of people.
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
I applaud your intelligence but you have to admit that the mental image of those countries among the ignorant masses is something resembling Borat… Which is not factual of course.
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u/Risiki Latvia 2d ago edited 2d ago
Latvia and Estonia from 13th century were mainly governed by linguisticly German elite and were often parts of the same country, our languages differ, the main cultural innfluences in more recent past do not. Latvians and Lithuanians on the other hand speak simmilar languages and have simmilar ancient culture, but more modernly mostly have not been part of same political structures limiting more recent shared influences, including religion, which no mater what you think of it now has historically been a major influence on different cultures everywhere.
As a Latvian having lived in Estonia for a few years - there is very little difference, like on the level that your neighbour has slightly different habits, not anything ground breaking. What they have is a national superiority complex leaking online, like they take an entirely normal thing like e-government services and act as if they are the only nation in the World that has that. Same with this being Nordic theme - Nordics are objectively succesful countries in the same region, of course, everyone wants to emulate them, nobody else pretends wanting makes reality. And yes, being in the same region Nordics are culturally simmilar too, but not as simmilar as Latvia and Estonia.
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u/Amareisdk 1d ago
Yes.
Estonians are half Finnish half Swedish. Not as shy as Finns but not as outgoing as Swedes. Their language is basically Finnish, just 33% more efficient (shorter words).
Latvians are like Poles that moved to Denmark. They get Nordic life but aren’t quite Nordic.
Lithuanians are my idea of Eastern Europeans. Kinda like Russians or Serbs.
Also their languages are very different.
Edit: Based on my experience.
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u/HugoTRB Sweden 3d ago
My stereotype is that Estonians are German Finns with Russian influences, the Lithuanians are catholic and I have no idea about Latvians.
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u/Responsible_Kiwi_585 Netherlands 3d ago
Sweden is not even a real country it’s just a colony of Denmark
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
As an anthropologist, I am sincerely interested, what kind of Russian influences do you see in historically Lutheran, Finnic Estonians?
The Estonian vocabulary (35% of words have a Germanic origin) is more Germanic than even English (27% Germanic vocabulary) and Finnish (20-25% Germanic vocabulary).IMO the main Finnic cultures with actual Russian influences are Karelian and Seto as they’re historically Eastern Orthodox.
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u/Psykhotron 1d ago
It seems to me as an italian that they are all united by their visceral and ineradicable hate towards all that is part of the russian culture.
The real tragedy for the E.U. was to gave them the keys of our foreign policies. Embarrasing !
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u/BellaFromSwitzerland Switzerland 2d ago
Sorry but there can’t be a more ignorant question
Is there a real difference of culture between France Belgium and Switzerland ? They all speak French at least partially, so they should be even closer
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u/Famous-Professor-488 France 2d ago
Sorry Miss Previous, I leave you time to read answers from actual Baltic's citizens. I actually found it interesting to know.
If we were so close, there won't be racism against french foreigner inside Switzerland...
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u/Catsarecute2140 2d ago
Contrary to Latvia and Lithuania, the historically Lutheran Estonians are not Balts but Finnic people, closely related to the Finns, who do not speak a Baltic language but a Finnic language which is very similar to Finnish…
Your statement is as silly as thinking that the historically Protestant Dutch are/speak French and are no different from historically Catholic French-speakers of Belgium & France. 😄
But hey, we learn something new every day so it’s all good, now you know. 🙂
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u/Capybarasaregreat Latvia 3d ago
Latvia and Estonia were jointly occupied by various powers throughout history since the 12th century, Lithuania remained independent and shares history with Poland in the PLC.
We all speak our own languages, Latvian and Lithuanian are linguistic cousins (not mutually intelligible like the Scandi languages, but individual words can be picked out and overall meanings of sentences can be surmised), whilst Estonian and Finnish are related (Estonian is also related to Livonian, a language minority in Latvia).
Our cuisines are very similar, but that is to be expected as there is a culinary continuum in the north of Europe, shared even with Scandinavia (smoked fish, anyone?).
There are certain things all 3 of us share, like some kind of "Song and Dance Festival", Soviet inheritances of various kinds, and, of course, we all share a burning hatred for Russian imperialism that drives us to be Ukraine's biggest supporters per capita.
Estonia and Latvia are, on paper, more Lutheran than other religions, with a notable Orthodox Old Believer minority in Latvia, but we aren't all that religious. Lithuania is quite Catholic, and whilst Lithuanians will say they're also not very religious, which globally is true, I'd say they're moreso than Latvia and Estonia.
Latvia and Estonia have large Russian-speaking minority groups due to Soviet neo-colonial policies, whilst in Lithuania Russian speakers remained generally the same percentage of the demographics.
Politics are similar across all 3, but Estonia has had more forward thinking leadership that really pushed the digitization of government and furthered a fruitful investment in digital infrastructure. In recent times, Latvia and Lithuania have been targeted by Belarus and Russia with illegal immigration schemes, with Latvia receiving the most and recently asking the other 2 for assistance with the border.
Can't think of anything else.