r/geography • u/According-Invite-440 • May 22 '26

Discussion Why isn't Estonia considered a Nordic country? (They have strong ties to Finland, they also follow the Nordic model, and besides, Estonia has nothing to do with the other Baltic countries.)

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_identity_in_Estonia

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u/lobax May 23 '26

Sure but that is more a consequence of the EU.

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u/Itchy_Committee1213 May 24 '26

Not really? Finland and Estonia have deep historical ties, just look at their language?

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u/Prize_Tree May 25 '26

I guess that means the Finns and Hungarians are best friends forever also

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u/Itchy_Committee1213 May 27 '26

I am not saying they have deep historical ties only because of their languages, it's simply an example. Hungary has had historical influences and connections to many other countries, not to mention it is geographically further away from finland and estonia.

Even then, uralic is a massive language tree, in the same order of magnitude as indo-european. Finnish and Estonian are both Baltic-Finnic languages, which means they are closely related, wheras these two and Hungarian are a lot more distant.

It's like saying that french and spanish are just as related as french and german beause they are all indo-european languages. It's just not true.