Submitted by Kieran Steinberg on the 2024 Winter LLCU program in Latvia…
During this second week of our stay, we’ve turned our focus towards the culture, art, and traditions of Latvia. On Wednesday, we met with the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Agnese Lāce. She spoke with us at length about the many ways Latvia works to preserve and celebrate their culture and history. The Ministry of Culture focuses as well on the “societal integration” sector of the Ministry, which works to bring about social cohesion between ethnic Latvians, the Russian speaking minority, and other minorities in Latvia, such as the Roma people. Fun fact, the Roma of Latvia are not nomadic, as they commonly are elsewhere.
On the subject of cultural celebration, this Saturday we had the opportunity to witness how Riga celebrates Barricades Day, one of its many public holidays. Many students went to watch the lighting of the fire and speech by President Rinkēvičs at 1000 hrs. At 1400 hrs, we all went to watch the laying of flowers at the Freedom Monument. Barricades Day is held in memory of a series of urban battles in the month of January 1991, in which the people of Riga, as well as other nearby cities, built barricades to keep out attacking USSR soldiers and loyalists. This was done after Latvia declared its independence from the USSR in 1990, before the USSR had been dissolved. Today, many foreign ambassadors take part in the flower ceremony; this year included ambassadors such as the US Ambassador and the Japanese Ambassador. Other celebratory events for Barricades Day include choir singing, which takes place from 1000 until 1700 hrs.
On Thursday, we also had the opportunity to visit the National Library of Latvia. It is a beautiful building, designed by Gunārs Birkerts, a Latvian-American architect who was based in the US, which is where many of his designs are located. The Library was his first design and build in Latvia, and was inspired by a folk tale called “The Glass Mountain”. In this folk tale, a princess is hidden away, high up on a Glass Mountain. Her father tells the country that whomever climbed the Glass Mountain and rescued her would have lands and her hand in marriage. It was with this “Glass Mountain” in mind that he designed the unique
shape of the Library. One other special design feature is the display of books, visible when you first walk into the Library. These books come from the human book chain which was formed to hand deliver 2000 books from the old building to the new one in 2014. People stood outside in the freezing cold, reminiscent of the Baltic Way – a pro-independence peaceful political demonstration from 23 April 1989. These books, along with many others which have been donated over the years, have been placed in what is now called “The People’s Bookshelf.” There are books from children and adults, to foreign ambassadors and world leaders. (Submitted on January 20, 2024)
