On Latvian symbols

We explore the ancient symbols that have guided Latvia for a thousand years. These aren't just decorative motifs: they're a living alphabet of belief, carved into Late Stone Age bone tools, woven into the fabric of daily life, and now finding new voice in contemporary Latvian identity.

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Transcript

On Latvian symbols

A friend’s jewellery

It was 1996. I hadn’t been living in Rīga for long, but I had already met a few people. One was a young British-Latvian management consultant. He was about my age and had come to Latvia driven by a personal calling to help the nation emerge from the Soviet era, drawing on his experience in UK management consultancy. Like many Latvian diaspora born abroad, he spoke Latvian and embraced Latvian culture. I was captivated by his silver jewellery. Rings on his fingers and pendants hanging on necklaces. These weren’t just simple silver bands. They bore symbols forged into them, symbols that seemed as old as the Earth itself. One pendant was a delicate silver cross with hooked ends, like lightning frozen in metal.

"That's Pērkona krusts," he said. "Thunder cross. I wear it for protection."

He handed it to me, and I turned it over in my palm, feeling the weight of something I didn't yet understand. That was my first lesson in a language older than words - the ancient symbols of Latvia, where every line and curve carries a story, a prayer, a piece of the sky itself.

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The ancient language of signs

Let’s decipher the ancient signs that have guided this nation through a thousand years of history. These aren't just decorative motifs: they're a living alphabet of belief, carved into Late Stone Age bone tools, woven into the fabric of daily life, and now finding new voice in contemporary Latvian identity.

What struck me most during my research wasn't just the age of these symbols, although some date back over 4,000 years, but how they have survived. While other nations lost their pagan heritage to the spread of Christianity, Latvia retained theirs, tucked into the borders of mittens, painted on barn doors, or whispered in dainas, those four-line folk songs that hold the entire cosmos in sixteen syllables.

Let's start with the essentials. The Latvian symbolic system comprises over a thousand distinct signs and their variations, forming what scholars call a "visual grammar" of Baltic belief. At its core are the deities who rule every facet of existence. Let’s examine a few of the most well-known ones.

Laima, whose name means "happiness" or "luck", is much more than just a bringer of fortune. As the goddess of fate, Laima weaves the thread of every human life, appearing at birth to pronounce destiny, at weddings to bless unions, and at death to cut the final cord. Her symbol is deceptively simple: a herringbone pattern of downward-pointing arrows that mimics the needles of a pine branch, found on Bronze Age artefacts and still embroidered on modern linen. What fascinated me was the intimacy of belief - Latvians didn't just pray to Laima; they lived with her. Folk tradition held that she resided beneath the threshold of the house, and you never handed anything across a threshold for fear of disturbing her.

Then there's Māra, the earth mother who governs the material world: land, water, and all living creatures. Her symbol is a zigzag line, dating from the Iron Age, representing both water waves and the furrows of ploughed fields. In dainas, she is invoked for fertility, health, and family. The cross of Māra - four smaller crosses joined - was carved into fresh bread and traced in fireplace ashes, a daily ritual that links the household to cosmic order.

The symbol that truly shocked me was Zalktis, the snake. In most European traditions, snakes are seen as sinister. In Latvia, however, the harmless zalktis was a sacred household guardian, a pet of the sun goddess Saule who brought prosperity and wisdom. People kept them by the stove, fed them milk, and believed that killing one would bring nine days of the sun's tears. The snake's ability to shed its skin made it a symbol of renewal and access to hidden knowledge - “if people themselves shed their skins", goes one folk saying, "now that would be something to wonder at". The symbol does indeed resemble a simple snake.

Then there is the thunder god Pērkons - the Latvian equivalent of Thor or Zeus - who wields his power through the thunder cross, a swastika-like sign over 3,000 years old. But this isn't the symbol appropriated by the Nazis in the 20th-century horror of the Second World War. The Baltic thunder cross symbolises fire, light, and protection against evil, carved into children's beds and woven into newborns' belts. Archaeological digs have uncovered bronze thunder crosses from the 3rd and 4th centuries, proving this potent symbol existed long before written records. Unfortunately, fascists appropriated the symbol for their own political purposes.

The sign of God is a triangle or a double-sided hook pointing skyward. Before Christianity, Latvians believed the sky was God's dwelling place. They carved this sign onto household items and used the same geometric shape to design house roofs so that they could live under the sign of God. Latvian folklore highlights that the central star in the sky is Saule (the Sun). The Sun symbolises eternal movement and life, and its shape resembles a daisy with petals. The Sun observes everything, knows all, and is often depicted on women’s clothing and jewellery. There are also symbols for the Moon (a double symbol) and stars (Auseklis, easily recognisable by its eight-pointed star shape).

To me, the most wonderful symbol is Austra Koks. Visually, it resembles a tree with spreading branches. This motif represents world order, connecting past, present, and future, and acts as a guardian of everything beautiful and valuable. It is believed to bring luck, blessings, and success - much needed in today’s age.

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Stories carved in symbols

These signs aren't just abstract patterns - they’re stories. Let me tell you the tale that helped me realise this.

The legend of Eglė, the Queen of Serpents, although Lithuanian in origin, reflects the Baltic worldview in which the human and spiritual realms are interconnected. Eglė, a young maiden, finds a grass snake coiled in her clothing after bathing. The snake demands that she marry him, and when she agrees, he transforms into a handsome man, Žilvinas, who takes her to his underwater palace. The story ends with tragedy and transformation, as Eglė and her children turn into trees - possibly explaining why Latvians see the world as alive with spirits, where a snake might be a god in disguise.

But the story that haunts me is about Laima and the threshold. In one daina, a woman in labour calls out: "Laima, Laima, come from behind the stove, from beneath the threshold, from the corner of the house!" The goddess arrives not as a celestial vision but as a presence within the home's very structure. She measures the baby's life with a linen thread, and when the thread runs out, so does the life. This isn't fatalism; it's an acceptance of life's cyclical nature that feels profoundly different from Western individualism.

The thunder god Pērkons has his own dramatic stories. In one tale, when the moon god Mėnuo committed adultery with the morning star, Pērkons chased him across the sky, striking him with thunderbolts and tearing him apart. The "bullets of Pērkons"—flint or bronze celts found in fields—were believed to have protective powers against devils and could cure a toothache or fever. I love the practicality: a thunderbolt becomes medicine.

Then there's Jumis, the fertility god symbolised by twin grain stalks growing as one. To me, his symbol resembles two crossed hockey sticks turned upwards and was carved onto barns to ensure abundant harvests. The word itself means "double fruit”, and the symbol represents the moment when the seed becomes abundance, a small miracle encoded in geometry. Do listen to my podcast episode “On Miķeldiena” for more stories about Jumis.

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Living symbols

What makes Latvian symbols exceptional isn't their age, but their resilience. Walk through any Latvian market today, and you'll find them everywhere: silver pendants of Auseklis, the morning star, an eight-pointed protective symbol; linen scarves embroidered with the sign of Māra; or pottery stamped with the snake motif.

During the Soviet occupation, these symbols became quiet acts of resistance. When Latvians couldn't fly their flag, they wore the thunder cross as jewellery. When Russian was mandated in schools, children learned dainas at home - each verse a small act of cultural preservation. The symbols were masked as "folk art”, but they carried identity in every stitch.

Modern Latvian designers have revitalised this heritage with striking creativity. The Lielvārde sash - those wide red-and-white woven belts with intricate patterns - features on Latvia's passports. Some scholars believe these patterns contain encoded messages, serving as a visual language predating writing. Fashion houses now incorporate ancient symbols into contemporary apparel. Graphic designers use the clean geometry of the fire cross in corporate logos. Tattoo artists note that young Latvians increasingly select traditional symbols - not as nationalist statements, but as personal talismans reconnecting them to ancestral wisdom.

A few years ago, the most popular winter clothing accessory was a woollen infinity scarf in a single colour, Latvian flag red being the most popular, with Latvian symbols in a contrasting colour knitted into it. Worn by women, men and children.

I have a beautiful T-shirt by a Latvian designer ‘Karel”s’ featuring a repeating Latvian symbol pattern. The designer now specialises in silk scarves and shawls but has previously produced other clothing items. Karel”s is a contemporary Latvian design brand, best known for high‑quality silk scarves and accessories that reinterpret traditional Latvian ethnographic patterns for a modern audience. The brand draws from authentic historical sources: original patterns are studied and then incorporated into new compositions and layouts that respect the character of the source textiles. The scarves often carry stories of specific Latvian regions, with local signs, colours, and symbols woven or printed into contemporary designs, creating what the company describes as a 21st‑century Latvian ethnographic design language.

Even the built environment speaks this language. The Latvian National Museum of Art's coin exhibition, "Our Values," displayed Latvian currency as a cultural symbol. The five-lats silver coin featured a folk maiden who has become "an idiosyncratic symbol of independent and free Latvia”. Riga's art nouveau architecture incorporates folk motifs. Do listen to my podcast episode “On Rīga’s art nouveau architecture”. Another example of using symbols is Rihards Zariņš, who designed Latvia's coat of arms and currency, creating works where "national motifs are incorporated alongside" modern design.

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Where to see and learn about these symbols

If you're in Rīga and wish to experience these symbols in their full context, there's one place that excels: the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum on the shores of Lake Jugla. Just a half-hour drive from the city centre or catch trolleybus number 31, this is Europe's oldest and largest outdoor museum, founded in 1924.

What makes it unique isn't just the 118 historic buildings from all four Latvian regions - though walking through those 17th-century farmsteads is truly transportive. It's that the museum employs traditional artisans who demonstrate crafts live. You can watch a weaver intertwine the Laima sign into a sash, see a blacksmith forge a thunder cross pendant, or observe a potter stamp Zalktis into clay. The museum hosts over 20 seasonal events each year, including the Traditional Applied Folk Art Fair, which has been running for nearly 50 years.

For a more concentrated dose of symbolic art and to play the game of “spot the Latvian symbol”, the Latvian National Museum of Art explores how artists from the late 19th century to the 1930s incorporated mythology into their work. The museum's permanent collection includes works by Janis Rozentāls and Vilhelms Purvītis, painters who embedded folk symbols into fine art. The museum is close to the city centre.

But honestly? The best classroom is the market. Find a vendor selling woven goods and ask about the patterns. Buy a silver pendant and wear it as you walk Rīga’s streets. The symbols will start speaking to you - not in words, but in the quiet recognition that you're participating in a conversation that has lasted four millennia.

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The power of symbols

What I've learned from studying Latvian symbols is that they represent a different way of knowing the world. In the West, we tend to see symbols as representations - stand-ins for abstract concepts. In Latvian tradition, the symbol is the power. The thunder cross doesn't represent protection; it performs protection. The grass snake doesn't symbolise wisdom; it embodies it.

This isn't superstition. It’s a sophisticated understanding of how meaning becomes physical. When you carve a sign into a child's bed, you're not merely decorating; you're enacting a belief that the physical world can be shaped by intention, that the line between symbol and reality is permeable.

Living in Latvia has taught me to view things around me differently. That pattern on a fence isn't just decoration - it's a prayer. That pendant isn't just jewellery - it's a dialogue with ancestors. These symbols remind us that culture isn't only preserved in museums; it's enacted daily in the choices we make about what to carve, what to wear, and what to pass down.

My friend was right. Pērkona krusts is for protection, but it also serves as a symbol of remembrance. It signifies continuity, a quiet affirmation that no matter how many empires rise and fall, some signs remain legible to those who know how to read them.

[Image from photo of Karel"s t-shirt by An Englishman in Latvia. Music by Noru from Pixabay]