Symbols as Means of Creating Cultural Communication and Identity. The Estonian Case
Symbols as Means of Creating Cultural Communication and Identity. The Estonian Case

Summary/Abstract: In the present article my main interest is to find out which kind of role symbols play in the self-description of Estonian culture and in the internal communication and how the “cultural formatting” of the society has occurred. Estonian culture can broadly be divided into two epochs. The first one comprises prehistoric (Raun 1987: 4–13) ancient Estonian culture during the period 1000 – 1200 (Talve 2004: 7–23) until the beginning of the 19th century. In the context of European culture it denotes the involvement of a geographical periphery into history, so to say “europisation of Europe” (Bartlett 1993: 388–419), because already the term “Ancient Estonia” sound paradoxical in comparison with the Early Middle Ages in Europe. The gap between Ancient Estonia and the cradle of the European culture – Ancient Greece is at least 1,400 years, and in regard to the oldest European epics Iliad and Odyssey recorded in 750 and 650 BC respectively.

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