Estonia (older English spelling Esthonia), officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti or Eesti Vabariik), is a country in Northern Europe. Estonia has land borders to the south with Latvia and to the east with Russia. It is separated from Finland in the north by the Gulf of Finland and from Sweden in the west by the Baltic Sea.
Estonia has been a member of the European Union since 1 May 2004 and of NATO since 29 March 2004.
The Estonian people are ethnically related to the Finns. The Estonian language is one of the Finno-Ugric languages and as such, along with its close relative Finnish as well as Hungarian, is one of the few official languages of the European Union that is not of Indo-European origin.
