On amber

The story of amber, the fossil that isn't quite a rock, isn't quite a jewel, yet has shaped trade routes, folklore, craft guilds, and Latvian identity for thousands of years. We'll explore how it was formed, how it travelled from these shores to the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, how it ended up pinned to the shoulder of traditional Latvian costumes, and how to buy the real thing without getting stung.

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On amber

Sunstone on my wrist

I’m wearing a piece of amber right now. It's set in a string bracelet, the size of a thumbnail, honey-coloured and unpolished. If I hold it up to the light, I can just make out a tiny fleck trapped inside it: a piece of plant matter, maybe, or a fragment of bark. 

I’ve seen people in Latvia walking on the beach in winter, particularly after a storm, eyes down. They are looking for something washed up on the shore that is older than the dinosaurs' extinction, older than the Baltic Sea itself, older than Latvia as a territory.

Today, we're talking about amber — dzintars, as it's known in Latvian — the fossil that isn't quite a rock, isn't quite a jewel, yet has shaped trade routes, folklore, craft guilds, and Latvian identity for thousands of years. We'll explore how it was formed, where the Balts believed it came from, how it travelled from these shores to the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, how it ended up pinned to the shoulder of traditional Latvian costumes, and how to buy the real thing without getting stung.

A story about Baltic gold.

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The origins of amber

There was a big storm in Latvia at the weekend, and I’m walking along the beach at Mazirbe. I ask myself: what actually is amber, and how was it formed? Amber isn't a mineral or a gemstone in the traditional sense, as it has no crystalline structure. It's fossilised tree resin, and geologists classify it as an "organic gem". Basically, the forest made it. Around 44–47 million years ago, during the warm Eocene epoch, vast conifer forests covered a landmass called Fennoscandia, stretching across what's now Scandinavia and northern Europe. Baltic amber is thought to derive largely from an extinct tree relative of today's umbrella pine family. Trees exude resin as a defence to seal wounds from storm damage, insects, or fungal attack. For reasons still debated (possibly a sudden shift in climate), these ancient forests produced resin in extraordinary excess. The resin then went on a journey. Rivers, geologists note, carried it from the forest into shallow seas, where it settled into sediment. The resin was then buried in an oxygen-free, glauconite-rich sediment layer nicknamed blue earth. Without oxygen, the resin didn't rot and slowly polymerised over millions of years, its lighter volatile compounds evaporating while the remaining molecules linked into long, stable chains. The process goes from resin to copal to amber. Resin first becomes copal (a softer, less stable form, sometimes mistaken for amber), and only after enough time under the right anaerobic pressure does it fully harden into true amber. Its chemistry makes it special. Baltic amber, known scientifically as succinite, contains a distinctively high 3–8% concentration of succinic acid: the trait that separates it from Dominican, Mexican, or Burmese amber.

How did it reach the Latvian beaches? Millions of years later, Ice Age glaciers scoured out the basin now filled by the Baltic Sea, exposing the amber-rich blue earth layer. Because the Baltic Sea's low salinity means amber doesn't quite float, storms roll it along the seabed and wash it ashore, which is exactly why, to this day, a good storm is the best time to go beach-combing on the Latvian coast.

Amber is also a time capsule. Because resin trapped insects, spiders, seeds, and even feathers before it hardened. Baltic amber is one of the richest fossil records of tiny Eocene life.

If you are walking along a beach in Latvia, keep your eyes down and stay curious. You never know, you may find a piece of this amber history.

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Baltic gold

The Amber Road

Because amber occurs almost nowhere else in such quantity, it became one of antiquity's most valuable long-distance trade commodities, sometimes called "the gold of the north". The so-called Amber Road was not a single road but a network of trade routes that carried amber from the Baltic and North Sea coasts south to the Mediterranean via the Vistula and Dnieper rivers, through Iron Age settlements, down to the Adriatic port of Aquileia near modern Venice, and onward to Rome, Greece, the Black Sea, Syria, and Egypt. Sections of the route ran directly through the territory of modern Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech lands, and Austria. Archaeology shows just how far this trade reached: a Baltic amber bead has been found in a Late Neolithic burial cave in north-eastern Iberia, dated to roughly 3634–3363 BC, evidence that amber moved westward across Europe more than a millennium earlier than historians once assumed. This trade lasted for thousands of years, and amber ornaments have turned up in Roman-period graves and even as far as Ming Dynasty China, underscoring how far amber travelled once it left Baltic shores.

Amber in Latvian and Baltic folklore

The dominant Baltic origin myth, regarded as a Lithuanian legend although well-known in Latvia, is the story of Jūratė, the sea goddess (Jūra means sea in Latvian). She lived in an amber palace beneath the Baltic Sea and ruled over maritime life to maintain the peace. A young man called Kastytis was fishing near her amber palace. He was a talented fisherman, and his large hauls made Jūratė angry. She decided to punish him, but instead fell in love with him. For a while, they lived happily in her amber palace. However, when Jūratė’s father, the thunder god Perkons, discovered the affair, he was furious. The Baltic gods regarded themselves as superior to humans, and she had been promised to marry the god of water, Patrimpas. In a rage, he shattered her amber palace with lightning, killing Kastytis with lightning bolts and chaining Jūratė to the ruins forever. The waves still carry fragments of her palace to shore, and the smallest, most tear-shaped pieces are said to be her tears, still falling for her lost love. Ahhh!

A parallel and distinctly Latvian tradition centres on Saule, the Baltic sun goddess (a beloved, motherly figure in Latvian dainas, folk songs). Saule is famously a "weeper" in the folk-song tradition: she cries at injustice, and when a sacred grass snake (zaltys) is harmed, her tears harden into amber. In another cycle of songs, Perkons shatters a golden oak at Saule's daughter's wedding, and Saule spends years gathering the fragments: a myth echoing amber's fragmentary, resin-of-sorrow symbolism that runs deep in Latvian oral history.

A third, simpler legend: in ancient times, there were said to be two suns in the sky, but the gods decided one had to go, so the unlucky sun was cast into the ocean, cooled, and shattered into thousands of glowing fragments that wash ashore today.

Because of this mythical association with the sun and with Saule, amber in Latvian folk beliefs carries the symbolism of the sun's life-giving warmth. Worn as jewellery, it was believed to bring ‘protection and harmony with nature’, and pieces were passed down as heirlooms carrying that protective charge from one generation to the next.

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Craft traditions

The sakta is a ring-shaped brooch, traditionally worn to fasten a linen shirt or cloak at the shoulder or neckline, and historically worn by both men and women. It is Latvia’s signature amber object. Its purpose is functional first, decorative second.

Rīga had a formal Brotherhood of Blacksmith-Brooch jewellers, chartered in 1512, with a strict apprenticeship: three years learning the craft, a further year under a master, and a final "graduation" piece, the creation of a Triple-Sakta, an elaborate wide brooch with a ring, before being accepted as a full craftsman. New entrants even had to pay in Rīga Marks and supply their fellow craftsmen with a barrel of beer and a joint of ham. I became a chartered Public Relations practitioner ten years ago, and although there was a formal assessment process, I didn’t have to buy a barrel of beer and a ham!

German jewellers began encroaching on the jewellery trade from the 17th century and reportedly broke the Brotherhood's cardinal rule by inserting painted glass into what should have been solid silver and amber sakta brooches. Latvians remain suspicious of traditional sakta, seeking authenticity and craft integrity, and view glass in sakta as a fake.

Amber brooches, amber beads, and double buttons were especially characteristic of southern Latvian regions, while other districts favoured plain silver, sometimes set with red or blue stones. Every district wore the sakta differently in their traditional costume, and the sheer number of brooches worn reflected a family's wealth and status. Sakta motifs, such as sun discs, crosses, spirals, and geometric patterns, were rarely decorative; they carried deeper symbolism. The sun motif in particular reflects the deep-rooted association between amber and Saule, believed to bring protection and harmony with nature to the wearer.

Beyond brooches, long strings of amber beads (sometimes graduated in size) were a staple of festive dress, often paired with silver clasps or fittings. Amber beads and pendant fragments recovered from Latvia's archaeological record date back to the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, among the oldest amber artefacts known anywhere.

By the 19th century national-awakening period, artisans and intellectuals revived old sakta forms as an assertion of cultural pride, a process that continues today, with saktas worn at Song and Dance Festivals, weddings, and folk events, and even appearing on Latvian stamps and on a Lat coin (the currency in Latvia before the Euro) featuring the "owl brooch" design.

Contemporary Latvian jewellers still adapt historic forms, such as the horseshoe, disc, owl, and "bubble" saktas, for modern dress, making this a living craft tradition rather than a museum relic.

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Buying amber in Latvia: a practical guide

Rīga’s old town is full of amber shops and market stalls, and Jūrmala's promenade and even Rīga Central Market are worth a browse too. Quality and authenticity vary widely. Be wary of pieces that look "too perfect", such as flawlessly uniform colour, oversized or perfectly centred insect inclusions, or identical beads strung one after another. These are red flags for moulded plastic or pressed amber rather than natural material. A reputable Latvian seller should be able to explain the piece’s provenance and confirm whether it is natural or treated (heated to clarify colour). Always worth asking, especially for higher-value pieces. Value depends far more on colour, clarity, size, and craftsmanship than on weight alone. Deep cognac and reddish tones generally command higher prices than pale honey tones in most Western markets, while a piece worked by a recognised jeweller carries a craft premium well above the value of the raw material.

A modern complication adds to the romance of Baltic amber. Much of the world’s industrially mined amber comes from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the so-called Amber Coast, just south of Lithuania. But ‘Baltic amber’ describes the material, not necessarily where it was mined. Under EU sanctions, Russian-origin amber is prohibited from import into the European Union, including Latvia. So, if you are buying amber in Riga and want to make an ethical choice, don’t be embarrassed to ask a simple question: where was this amber extracted or found, and can you show me its provenance? A shop should be able to tell you whether it comes from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine or elsewhere. If the answer is only ‘Baltic’, that is not really an answer. 

That does not mean every anonymous piece is Russian, or that a visitor can identify a sanctions breach by looking at a pendant. It means that provenance matters: not only because you want the real thing, but because a small golden souvenir can be part of a very current and very serious story about an aggressive war against Ukraine.

So, ask for the country of extraction or where it was found, not just whether it is “Baltic amber.” Ask whether the seller is the maker and whether they can provide a receipt or a written statement of origin. Established Latvian jewellers and workshops will identify the maker and materials. And treat phrases such as “European amber,” “Baltic amber,” or “natural amber” as incomplete provenance claims.

Happy hunting!

Visiting the amber collection at the Latvian Museum of Natural History

The Latvian National Museum of Natural History, at K. Barona iela 4 in Rīga, hosts a long-running permanent exhibition on amber, called "Amber Through the Times," covering amber's formation, its natural forms and colour range, insect and plant inclusions, and its use in traditional jewellery. The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00, and charges a small entrance fee. It also has a much wider natural history collection that is well worth exploring.

An alternative (or a visit to both) is the amber museum “Amber Queen” on Vaļņu iela 23 in Old Riga. It showcases the private amber collection of Viļnis Zanders, affectionately known as the “Amber King”, across three floors. The collection includes amber and pendant fragments from the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, Roman-era pieces, and material linked to Prussian, Königsberg, Polish, and even Ming Dynasty amber-working traditions, alongside a replica that captures the "taste and smell" of the legendary Amber Room. There is also a shop attached, selling amber, of course!

If you are in Rīga, why not visit a museum first to see the science and history, then shop with a more informed eye.

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Carrying the sun home

So the next time you're wandering around the shops in the old town of Rīga, or picking your way along a windswept beach in Jūrmala after a storm and you spot a small golden fragment glinting in the sand, you'll know you're holding something that began as sap oozing down a pine trunk forty-five million years ago, travelled the length of Europe on donkeys and river barges to end up on the wrist of a Roman bride, was once believed by Latvians to be the tears of a weeping sun goddess, and might have taken a Rīga silversmith five years to learn to set properly. That's rather a lot of story for something you can slip into your coat pocket.

[Image of An Englishman in Latvia’s amber bracelet. Music by Moniruzzaman Bishal from Pixabay. Sound effects by An Englishman in Latvia on Mazirbe’s beach]