Here comes my country - Estonia.
800-1100 A.D. Estonian vikings raiding Baltic Sea.
Estonians kidnap Norwegian Queen Astrid and her son, future King Olaf Trygvesson—sell them into slavery. Estonians destroy Sweden’s main town, Sigtuna.
Estonia is a country that during it's history was under foreign occupation most of the time. Can this be unique thing about country? If yes, then here is short list:
1219 - Danes take north Estonia - first occupation
1227 - German crusaders conquer and Christianize pagan Estonia; the Germans become landed gentry and wield huge influence for 700 years.
1346 - Fed up with constant rebellions by natives, Danes sell northern Estonia to the German Teutonic Order
1561 - Swedes conquer Estonia, repel Russians.
1710 - Russia conquers Estonia, though Germans retain local control. The battle with Sweden causes 80 percent of the 100,000 Tallinn population to die—mainly by starvation and the plague.
1860-1885 - Growing national consciousness—followed by a Czarist backlash.
1870 - Petersburg-Tallinn railway finished; Tallinn becomes a major Russian Empire port.
1905 - Poor peasants vent their anger at Czarist police and Baltic Germans, who own more than half the land in Estonia.
1918 - Estonian forces beat back German and Soviet militaries. They’re aided at critical points by Great Britain.
1920 - Against all odds, Estonia wins independence!
1935 - Estonia becomes increasingly frantic about the threat from Soviet Russia to the east and Nazi Germany to the west. In the meantime, Estonia prospers, with GDP reaching or surpassing Nordic levels.
1939 - Hitler and Stalin carve up Europe, with the Baltics said to be the Soviet sphere. Before, the Baltics were able to play Germany and Russia off each other, but they’re now virtually within the clutches of Russia—with Germany’s acquiescence.
1940 - As Germany invades France, the U.S.S.R. grabs Estonia.
1941 - June 14 First mass deportations by Stalinist forces, targeting the cream of society. Others dragged out of detention cells and shot.
1941 - Germany occupies Estonia. According to German plans, Estonia would be repopulated with Germans and converted into a new Third Reich state stretching as far as Petersburg.
1944 - Soviet occupation again; thousands flee West, others head to the forests to resist. Some anti-Soviet forest partisans engage Soviet troops in battle.
1949 - More mass deportations to Siberia.
1987 - First open protests against Soviet rule.
1991 - In January, Soviets crackdown on Baltics.
August 1991 Moscow’s authority having collapsed, the impossible dream of restoring independence comes true literally overnight.
March 29, 2004 Estonia is accepted into NATO. It's the first time in its history to join a military alliance voluntarily. - funny, if not ironic, isn't it?
Sorry, at the end I see it is not short.
One funny thing about Finland. Yesterday, I went to see my good friend and he somewhere, somehow, found one song. Russian song, recorded somewhere in 1930, about the 16th state of the USSR - Finland! Soviets were so sure on defeating Finland in Winter War that they recorded official song about beauty of Soviet Finland, and about loyalty of finnish people, hehe.
