Collaboration with Day Translations. Estonia has welcomed many remote workers and digital nomads in recent times and thanks to the introduction of its Digital Nomad Visa the whole process of working and travelling in Estonia was made easier for a wider community.

Digital Nomad Visa in Estonia

Estonia has put a lot of effort into its modernisation process to appeal to international investment. One of the ways to implement it was to offer the opportunity to work remotely to non-citizens. The Estonian government has all the information regarding the Digital Nomad Visa online and the process to apply is quite straightforward.

This type of visa is dedicated to digital nomads and remote workers who want to stay in Estonia for up to a year. Workers can either be employed or run their own businesses. The main requirement for this visa is that the employer or company needs to be registered outside of Estonia. The visa also allows travel within the country.

There is also a wealth of information available on the website including how to set up an e-Residency, which involves a different way to operate. The e-Residency programme is aimed at those who want to set up a business in the EU using remote tools and access services to run the business including taxation and payments, although it does not entitle to travel within Estonia.

The cost of living in Estonia is rather low but prices in the capital Tallinn are more expensive, as there are more facilities such as co-working spaces.

What Estonia Has to Offer

Looking beyond work, it is worth exploring the country and its amenities. The Official Tourist Information Website for Estonia contains plenty of information about what the country offers and places of interest. The best time to visit is during the summer to really make the most of the outdoors and particularly the beaches, but winter can provide plenty of charm as the landscape is covered with a thick blanket of snow and with the availability of skiing and snowboarding across a number of resorts, or the unique experience of dog-sledding.

In a nutshell, key highlights include:

• museums, galleries and architecture
• nature and wildlife
• health and spas.

Museums

Estonia does not scrimp when it comes to culture: it boasts about 250 museums and while the majority are based in the capital Tallinn, there are other museums in the rest of the country worth visiting.

Some of the museums are free to enter and others charge a small entrance fee.

Nature

There are plenty of parks to explore and opportunities to discover nature in all its glory, including activities such as horse riding to get a genuine and up-close experience of Estonia’s beaches and forests.

Spas

The variety of spa treatments in Estonia can suit any need and any type of budget, from essential to luxury. Think about all that stress after working at the laptop for hours and how a trip to a spa can help release the tension and give a sense of rejuvenation.

Saunas are very popular and are an important part of Estonia’s culture, and they range for more traditional wood-fired saunas to salt saunas.

Language

A quick mention of the national language of Estonia: Estonian Eesti is related to the Finnic or Balto-Finnic language from the Baltic Sea and is part of the Uralic family of languages, which includes Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian. It is one of the most difficult languages to learn and about one million people speak it. While the original Uralic language was unwritten as it was spoken by different tribes, it was later formalised with the earliest documents in the language dating back to the thirteenth century.

The Estonian language uses the Latin alphabet plus letters with diaeresis (umlaut), for example ä, ë, ö.

The term Estonian also relates to how tribes described the region as being in the East.

Estonia was invaded by German and Russian colonisers but the local people defended their language fiercely and that’s why it is still spoken today. Estonia gained independence from Soviet rule twice: in 1918-1920 through war and in 1991 by referendum.

Today the second languages that Estonians can speak are usually English and Russian. For any language translation needs Day Translations offers a number of services through its platform.