When, in the media, the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are mentioned, usually in a sentence like “Russia may again threaten the tiny Baltic states, which unlike Ukraine are members of NATO and the EU”, they are frequently referred to as being “tiny”.

This is certainly true of their populations: only 3 million people live in Lithuania, 2 million live in Latvia, and 1.3 million in Estonia. (If, however, you include the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which is located between Lithuania and Poland, or the Russian Baltic city of St Petersburg, which is between Estonia and Finland, there are an additional 5.5 million people). It is not nearly as true of the Baltics’ territory sizes, however: they are actually not so tiny, but only appear so because they are located next to much larger countries, most notably Russia.

All three Baltic states have larger territories, for example, than the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, and Switzerland, countries which most people probably assume are bigger than they are. In per capita terms, moreover, the Baltics have quite a bit more land than other European states outside of neighbouring Scandinavia or the former Soviet Union. (The Baltics’ population densities are about the same as the United States’). And in terms of per capita arable land and per capita forested land, their lead over other European countries is even greater.