Latvia: Rīga and Beyond

Late one warm Saturday afternoon finds us on the sundeck of the Rīga ferry as it navigates its way through the beautiful labyrinth that is the Stockholm archipelago.

We pass so close to some islands that we can exchange greetings with the summer house dwellers sunning themselves on the rocks. Islands upon islands, pine forests, red and yellow-painted summer houses, sailing boats, skerries. Then out into the Baltic Sea, calm enough on the night of our crossing to sleep without memory.

Among the crowd on the ferry are Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian faces and braids and floral dresses. Our first conversation in Rīga is with a woman, a filmmaker, who as a child in Russian-occupied Latvia knew of life beyond the Iron Curtain only through the stories told in letters from an aunt in Perth, Western Australia.

We explore the old town, the medieval part of the city, as well as the streets of early 20th-century Art Nouveau buildings, of which there are hundreds in Rīga. Some of the facades are recently renovated and flamboyant with statues, motifs and fantastical ornamentation. The interiors are largely down-at-heel, still reeling from the Soviet era when the once light and spacious apartments became communal living spaces for two to three emigre families and the art nouveau features were stripped as aesthetics gave way to more basic needs. 

The political/cultural/social history museums are fascinating. The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia – Latvia being more occupied than not in the 20th century; the Corner House – the former headquarters of the Russian KGB where dissidents were interrogated and exiled to the gulags of Siberia; and the Museum of the Popular Front of Latvia – leaders of the non-violent campaign for independence. Their most poetic action was the 1989 Baltic Wave. Two million people from across the Baltic States demonstrated their desire for independence by joining hands and singing in an unbroken line stretching from Tallinn in Estonia, through Rīga, to Vilnius in Lithuania.

Latvians say they still sleep with one eye open, watching for any move the Russians might make to reoccupy Latvia. With Putin in power, the unease is warranted.

Outside of Rīga lies a green world of woods and national parks. We walk in Kemeri National Park, stunningly beautiful with its high lakes, marshes and dwarf pine trees. Neon blue dragonflies hovering over peat black pools; wild blueberries, cloudberries and cranberries; rare birds like the wood sandpiper and the European golden plover. In the forest on the way to the marshlands, we pass an old man returning from foraging, his cane basket laden with wild mushrooms.

We walk too in Gauja National Park with its steep forested hillsides, medieval castles, a large cave with 16th-century graffiti and the swift-flowing, icy cold Gauja River. On the train to Sigulda (where we start our walk), we see white cranes in the fields and people out in the forest picking berries. Old women in headscarves, long skirts and traditional jackets forage alongside young men in tight, brightly coloured jeans and floral shirts. Sunny yellow wildflower meadows. A vehicle deep in the dark forest, inexplicable and conjuring up the spectre of more sinister times.

Jūrmala on the Gulf of Rīga is a summer playground of white quartz sand beaches and ice-blue seas. It is windswept the day we are here but still crowded with suntanned Russians flaunting their wealth. Some of the lovely old Prussian timber summer houses have been renovated. Others have been abandoned or demolished and replaced with modern concrete condominiums.

The Rīga Central Market, one of the largest marketplaces in Eastern Europe, is housed in old Zeppelin hangers. It features five pavilions; one for dairy, one for fruit and vegetables, one for fish, one for meat and one for gastronomy, with small bars and cafes at either end of the hangars. Home-pickled vegetables, salted fish, smoked eel, mounds of jewel-like caviar, Latvian cheeses, wild berries and mushrooms gathered in the forests. Some of the stallholders resemble the Russian babushka dolls on sale in the corridors between the hangars.

We have an apartment near Peace Street. Out wandering we happen upon dilapidated buildings, seemingly abandoned until we tread across broken courtyards and find ourselves in the hippest of bars or the most bohemian of art spaces.

Situated on the River Daugava, Rīga has long been a merchant city with an ancient amber, fur and honey trade. The Venice of the North. At times more than fifty per cent of its population has been non-Latvian. It has been occupied. By Poland, Sweden, Nazi Germany, and, again and again, Russia. Waves of people have immigrated here. And waves of people have left, seeking refuge or better fortune elsewhere. Yet there seems to persist a strong Latvian culture and a deep rootedness to the land. Spellbound, we leave feeling that the walls of Rīga have many more stories to tell.