Latvia

Latvia was a pagan country right into the 12th century. Traces of that paganism remain today as evidenced by the wide practice of herbal medicinal remedies, water divination, and summer solstice celebrations. Latvians have an attitude to nature that expresses a belief that there is life in all things that come from nature. For instance, a wooden whistle bears the spirit life of the tree. Latvian cemeteries are in forrests because the decaying body gives life to the tree and the tree gives life to the whistle, which embodies the life in the tree and the spirit of the body. There are many songs played on the whistle that tell of the death usually of a young girl, whose spirit comes to life in the song played by the whistle made from the tree from which it was formed. Rather nice, don't you think?

Latvia is a country that has been repeatedly occupied throughout the centuries first by the Germans, then the Poles, the Swedes, the Germans again, the Tzars of Russia. Finally Latvia declared itself to be an independent country which lasted only until the Bolsheviks took over after WWI. Then in WWII, first the Nazis arrived, staying for three years or so, setting up a labor camp that claimed thousancds of lives, not through extermination, but through hard labor and starvation. Then the Russians came in and "liberated" Latvia from the Nazis, deporting many thousands of intellectuals and dissidants to Siberia, where few survived the harsh conditions. Finally, on May 4, 1991, Latvia declared itself an independent state. The Germans were the first to recognize Latvia as an independent country, the Russians the second.

One day we went to the site of the Nazi labor camp outside of Riga. The camp was burned down as news came to the Nazis that the Russians would soon be there. In place of the former camp structures, there is a large field with massive concrete abstract sculptures depicting the agonies of the people in the concentration camp. In the photo above, the men in line are helping to support fellow prisoners. The man with the raised arm at last declares victory over inhumanity.

We enjoyed an excellent presentation by a professor of music at a university in Riga. He talked about what can be learned about a culture through music and song. He demonstrated various instruments typical to Latvian folk music: the whistle, the flute, the kokles (a stringed instrument resembling an autoharp) and the bagpipe. Bagpipes in Latvia??!! Yep! Some of the folk song lyrics are hysterically sexually explicit. It was a fascinating lecture as well as the lecture on Latvian history.

We toured Riga its markets and museums, attended an organ recital played on the largest pipe organ in the world, a musical program at a school for the arts, and a cello recital. I liked the physical layout of the town and would liked to have spent more time there. Oh...and I waded in the Baltic Sea!

Photos from left to right, top to bottom: By the Baltic Sea; sculpture at the Nazi labor camp; a view of Riga Old Town; the Hanseatic League building in Old Town Riga.