Baltic Review
“We too reflect on how we can feel grand as a nation.
But it is not easy to find a way to do that. We cannot call ourselves a cradle of Western culture and democracy like Greece. And we have never built up an empire or ruled like the Italians as descendants of the Ancient Romans or the British as a nation of seafarers in whose empire the sun had never set – even when Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne. The Estonians have never won major battles like the French or the Venetians, and they’ve never had their own kingdom like the Poles or the Lithuanians. Nor can you find here at home philosphers or scientists who’ve moved the world, like the German ones did. So what remains? As we Estonians are also not above the desire for grandeur, the only possibility left open to us is to turn to culture. Our poets and personalities help us Estonians to define ourselves as a nation and to bolster our self-confidence.”
(http://baltic-review.com/2010/... )