June 4 – Estonia's Flag Day

Key Points

nPosted on June 4, 2019

There are lots of words that we use when we talk about a nation’s Flag Day.

n“Adopted” is a common one. There are sometimes a variety of flags, including battle flags, that are use by the people of a region, but when they formalize their national government, people often officially adopt a flag. The nation may celebrate its Flag Day on the anniversary of this adoption.

The story behind June 15,
Denmark’s Flag Day, is that
on that date in 1219, the flag
(called the Dannebrog)
fell from the sky!

n“First flown” or “first used” is another common phrase – because some nations celebrate the anniversary of the date their flag was first planted on the land, or first flown above a building, or first carried into battle.

n“Created” or “designed” or “sewed” – these words are more unusual in a Flag Day declaration – I think partly because it is in many cases hard to figure out the exact date when someone first designed or sewed a flag. But I have seen these words in descriptions of a few nations’ Flag Days.

nSome nations choose the anniversary of a victory or loss, of the death of a martyr or other hero, of the declaration of independence or the founding of a settlement or the establishment of a government – those not-particularly-flag-oriented anniversaries can and sometimes are celebrated as a nation’s Flag Day.

nAnd of course some nations don’t celebrate a Flag Day at all. Even though all of them have a flag!
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nBut I was surprised when I read why June 4 is Estonia’s Flag Day: today is the anniversary of the date in 1884 when Estonia’s tri-color flag was…consecrated! That means that the flag was declared to be sacred, which is (as I said) surprising.

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nThe colors used for the Estonian flag are blue, representing the sky; black, representing the land and Estonians’ attachment to the land; white for purity, hard work, and commitment.

nThis is a lot like the symbolism of other nations’ colors and flags. Reading these explanations can seem a bit like “blah-blah blah-blah-blah.”

nBUT! –

nWhile reading about Estonia’s flag, I was startled to see that some people say that the flag should be redesigned by using Estonia’s colors to make the Nordic or Scandinavian cross – because Estonia has close historical and cultural ties with Sweden, Denmark, and especially Finland.
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nI had no idea! I’ve always thought of Estonia as Baltic, not Scandinavian – and indeed, every list I’ve checked of the Baltic nations does lump Estonia together with Latvia and Lithuania, calling the three the Baltic nations.
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nBut check out the geography: you can see that, not only do those three nations range around the Baltic Sea, so do Sweden, Denmark, and Finland (plus, of course, Poland)!

nAnd then I read that some of the same people urging a Nordic flag for Estonia are also pushing the idea of changing the name of Estonia in English and Spanish and other languages to the name the nation has in Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian, and Swedish. That Germanic-languages name is Estland.
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nThat’s a bit surprising, since the name for Estonia is Eesti in the Estonian language!!

nAnd then I read that the Estonian language – unlike the Latvian and Lithuanian languages – is in the same language group as Finnish – and, honestly, I didn’t think that ANY language was similar to Finnish! Estonian does have some German words, because it used to be ruled by Germany, but its roots are not the Indo-European language roots that almost all European and quite a few West Asian languages share. Instead, the Estonian language’s roots are Finnic-Uralic.
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The point of the above chart is apparently that
the Finnish language is not all that yksinkertainen!

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It’s possible that the color names for purple, pink, and orange
are relative newcomers to Estonian – they certainly seem
more like the English (and other Indo-European languages)
than do the other Estonian color words.

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n(Russian is spoken as a second language by older Estonian people, because Estonia was ruled by the Russia-dominated Soviet Union. Now that it’s independent, Estonian is becoming more important again; just a few years after independence, most non-ethnic-Estonians didn’t speak Estonian, but by 2010 about two-thirds of them did.)
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Livonian is a highly endangered language
spoken by a few ethnic Livonians who live
in Latvia.
Apparently, nobody now learns Livonian
as their “mother tongue” or first language.

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nAnyway, even though the Estonian language is supposed to be a lot like the Finnish language, the Finnish name for the nation is quite different than the name in any other language: Viro.

nI seem to have gotten pretty far from Estonia’s flag…but such is the power of the wandering and wondering mind!