When the first grammar of what we now call Estonian, *Anfführung zur
Estonischen Sprach*, was written by the Tallinn-based German priest
Heinrich Stahl and published in 1637. At that time what we now call
Estonia was administered as two provinces: Vironia (Wierland), with itscenter in Reval (Tallinn), and Livonia (Livland), with its administrative
center in Riga and, eventually, a secondary cultural center in Dorpat

(Tartu). Due to this adminstrative division, Estonian linguistic-based

nationalism got off to a dual start, with two norms of speech and writing being consolidated into languages on the basis of the local speech of the


two main centers of the dialect continuum: Tallinn and Tartu. From the


17th until well into the 19th century both northern and southern Estonian


had their own norms and publication activity and were thus two different


languages serving the most important centers of a the southern-most part


of the Baltic-Finnic linguistic continuum.