Estonians can also be classified into subgroups according to dialects (e.g. Võros, Setos), although such divisions have become less pronounced due to internal migration and rapid urbanisation in Estonia in the 20th century.

There are approximately 1 million ethnic Estonians worldwide, with the vast majority of them residing in their native Estonia.

[21] On the other hand, some recent linguistic estimations suggest that Finno-Ugric speakers arrived around the Baltic Sea considerably later, perhaps during the Early Bronze Age (ca.

[24] The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is maarahvas,[26] literally meaning "land people" or "country folk".

[30] Estonians have strong ties to the Nordic countries stemming from important cultural and religious influences gained over centuries during Scandinavian and German rule and settlement.

[31] According to a poll done in 2013, about half of the young Estonians considered themselves Nordic, and about the same number viewed Baltic identity as important.

[35][failed verification] During the period of Tsarist rule of Estonia (1710-1917), over 100,000 Estonians migrated to the neighbouring areas of the Russian Empire, especially to the then capital city Saint Petersburg.

[36] [37] During World War II, when Estonia was invaded by the Soviet Army in 1944, large numbers of Estonians fled their homeland on ships or smaller boats over the Baltic Sea.

Over the years of independence, many Estonians have chosen to work abroad, primarily in Finland, but also in the UK, Benelux, Sweden, and Germany.

[43] R1a, common in Eastern Europe,[45] was the dominant Y-DNA haplogroup among the pre-Uralic inhabitants of Estonia, as it is the only one found in the local samples from the time of the Corded Ware culture and Bronze Age.

[25] It originated in East Eurasia[46] and is commonly carried by modern Uralic-speaking groups but also other North Eurasians, including Estonians' Baltic-speaking neighbors Latvians and Lithuanians.

[43] Compared to the Balts, Estonians have been noticed to have differences in allelic variances of N1c haplotypes, showing more similarity with other Finno-Ugric-speakers.

[54] Uralic peoples typically carry a Siberian-related component, which is also present in Estonians and makes up about five percent of their ancestry on average.