Kalevipoeg (Kalev's Son) is an epic poem by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald held to be the Estonian national epic.

There existed an oral tradition within Ancient Estonia of legends explaining the origin of the world. Within old Estonian folklore, a malevolent giant by the name of Kalev, Kalevine, Kalevipoiss, Kalevine posikine and Kalevin Poika appears, battling with other giants or enemies of the nation. The earliest written references are found in Leyen Spiegel in 1641 as "Kalliweh", and in a list of deities published by Mikael Agricola in 1515 as "Calenanpoiat".

The main material is taken from Estonian folklore of a giant hero named Kalevipoeg ("Kalev's son", often Anglicised as "Kalevide"). These tales mainly interpret various natural objects and features as traces of Kalevipoeg's deeds and have similarities with national epics from neighbouring regions, especially the Finnish Kalevala, and also in Scandinavia.

In 1839, Friedrich Robert Faehlmann read a paper at the Learned Estonian Society about the legends of Kalevipoeg. He sketched the plot of a national romantic epic poem. In 1850, after Faehlmann's death, Kreutzwald started writing the poem, interpreting it as the reconstruction of an obsolete oral epic. He collected oral stories and wove them together into a unified whole.

Artur Kapp (28 February 1878 – 14 January 1952) was an Estonian composer.

Born in Suure-Jaani, Estonia, then part of the Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire, he was the son of Joosep Kapp, who was also a classically trained musician. Kapp began his musical career studying organ at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory as a student of both Louis Homilius and composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1891. Kapp graduated from the Conservatory in 1900 as a composer and from 1904 until 1920 worked as a music director in the southern Russian city of Astrakhan, then returning to Estonia as a professor and conductor at the Tallinn Conservatory where he counted among his students such future notable Estonian composers as Evald Aav, Edgar Arro, Gustav Ernesaks, Helen Tobias-Duesberg, Riho Päts and Enn Võrk. He is, along with Rudolf Tobias (1873-1918), generally considered to be one of the founders of Estonian symphonic music.

Kapp's son Eugen (1908–1996) and nephew Villem (1913–1964) became notable composers as well, having studied at the Tallinn Conservatory under direction of the elder Kapp.

Amandus Heinrich Adamson (12 November 1855, Uuga-Rätsepa, near Paldiski – 26 June 1929, Paldiski) was an Estonian sculptor and painter.

Born into a seafaring family, Adamson excelled in wood carving as a child. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1875 to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Alexander Bock. After graduation he continued to work as a sculptor and teacher in St. Petersburg, with an interruption from 1887 through 1891 to study in Paris and Italy, influenced by the French sculptors Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

Adamson produced his best-known work in 1902. His Russalka Memorial, dedicated to the 177 lost sailors of the Ironclad warship Russalka, features a bronze angel on a slender column. The other work is architectural. His four allegorical bronzes for the Elisseeff department store in St. Petersburg (for architect Gavriil Baranovsky), and the French-style caryatids and finial figures for the Singer House (for architect Pavel Suzor) are major components of the "Russian Art Nouveau" visible along Nevsky Prospekt.