Latvia

Discover Latvia

Fun Foods

Speķa Pīrāgi, Grey Peas with Bacon, Rupjmaize, Karbonāde, Smoked Sprats, Sklandrausis, Rupjmaizes Kārtojums

In 1510, a club of merchants in Riga, Latvia’s capital, set up a tree in the town square and decorated it with flowers, fruit, and toys. Then they danced around it, and set it on fire.

Riga says this was the world’s first decorated Christmas tree, and a plaque in the square says so in eight languages.

There’s one problem. Tallinn, the capital of neighboring Estonia, says the same merchant club put up a tree there in 1441, 69 years earlier. The two cities have been happily arguing about it ever since.

Riga itself was founded in 1201 and grew rich trading across the Baltic Sea. Over the centuries, Germans, Poles, Swedes, and Russians all took turns ruling the land.

Through all of it, Latvians kept their own songs. In the 1800s, a man named Krišjānis Barons spent decades collecting the short folk songs called dainas.

He published almost 218,000 of them. The cabinet where he stored them is now protected by UNESCO as one of the world’s treasures of memory.

Latvia finally became independent on November 18, 1918. But in 1940, the Soviet Union took it over, and in June 1941, Soviet police forced more than 15,000 people from their homes and sent them to Siberia.

Then Nazi Germany invaded. During the Holocaust, nearly 70,000 Latvian Jews were killed, including 25,000 in the Rumbula Forest near Riga in just a few weeks.

After the war, the Soviets returned and sent another 43,000 people away in 1949.

In January 1991, Latvians feared Soviet soldiers would attack. Thousands of people built barricades around key buildings in Riga and guarded them day and night, without weapons.

That August, Latvia restored its independence.

Today, Riga’s center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, packed with about 800 Art Nouveau buildings covered in carved faces, dragons, and swirling flowers. Look up on Alberta Street to spot stone heads staring back at you.

Then explore Riga Central Market, one of Europe’s biggest food markets, set inside five giant hangars once built for zeppelins, the huge airships of World War I.

For food, grab speķa pīrāgi, crescent-shaped buns stuffed with bacon and onion. The national dish is grey peas with bacon, served with dark rye bread.

For dessert, try rupjmaizes kārtojums, layers of sweet rye breadcrumbs, berry jam, and whipped cream.

Sources: LSM: O Christmas Trees, O Christmas Trees, In Your Pocket: Riga, and The JC: Riga, Cultured Capital.