The history of Estonia begins in the tenth millennum BC, when the retreat of the last ice age made the region fit for human habitation. It’s not known who first settled the area, but by 3000BC they had been displaced by the ancestors of today’s Estonians, a Finno-Ugric tribe closely related to the Finns. The early Estonians were farmers and fishermen who practiced an animistic religion. There were few villages or towns until the tenth century AD, when a tribal society emerged ruled over by chieftains based in stockade forts.

By the tenth century the Estonians were developing trade links with Vikings and Russians, but were otherwise isolated from the rest of Europe. Things changed in the thirteenth century, when militant German monks established the Brotherhood of the Sword (subsequently the Livonian Order) in order to subdue and forcibly convert the pagan peoples of the Baltic region. Southern Estonia soon fell to the Brotherhood. A newly expansionist Denmark established control over the north.

Whether under the Danes or the Brotherhood, the Estonians were now subject to a Teutonic-Nordic aristocracy who built stone fortresses to consolidate their power. Eventually the Danes sold their colonial possessions to the Livonian Order, who became the dominant power in the region.