Updated portal about Livonian history, language and culture www.livones.net

On January 19, 2018 the Livonian culture, language and history web portal www.livones.net met its readers in an updated and modern form. This was a tribute – in the Livonian culture centre (Līvõ Kultūr sidām) – for the most active Livonian culture representative and native speaker in the second half of the twentieth century Paulīne Kļaviņa’s 100^th jubilee.

The website, which has been working since 2006, is the only one portal in Latvia available online that is related to Livonian topics. On it still can be found detailed information about the Livonians, their culture, language, history, and the Livonian heritage in Latvia. The content can be read not only in Latvian, but also in English and Livonian languages.

The updated portal www.livones.net has been supplied not only with a new visual layout, but is also supplemented with various important new sections.

The most important of them is lingua.livones.net – a section that provides various tools connected to the Livonian language that could be used both by readers showing interest in the Livonian language, and by researchers from all over the world. In the section could be found studies about the Livonian language, as well as a constantly updated version of a Livonian-Estonian-Latvian dictionary supplemented with word forms and data from the Livonian language corpus. Available are also the Livonian place name register, a list of borrowings from Livonian into Latvian language, and other tools for getting acquainted with the Livonian language and acquiring it. The new section of the portal will be gradually filled in with the University of Tartu’s upcoming Livonian language grammar this very year.

The second most important section is “Library”, in which the readers could find a compilation of articles, websites, video materials, photo galleries and documentaries on various topics.

The transformation of the portal and its modern visual and technical form has happened thanks to the Ministry of Culture of Latvia, and the creation of the Livonian language tools – thanks to the Latvian Language Agency. Special thanks go to the Member of the Parliament Veiko Spolītis.

Photo: the Livonian native speaker Paulīne Kļaviņa. Photo: V. Strautniece. V. Ernštreits, personal archive.

The Livonians are a nation of Finnic origin indigenous to Latvia. They have been of great significance for the Latvian nation’s formation. The contemporary Latvian language has been created during the language contact of the Livonians and the proto-Baltic tribes – Latgalian, Semigallian and Curonian – and that determines the unique way it sounds in. Similarly, the Livonian cultural heritage has its impact on several Latvian traditional, as well as contemporary, cultural areas, starting from folklore up to culinary heritage. For that reason the Livonians are seen as a part of the Latvian cultural canon and other documents. For its part, the Livonian language has been included in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, having the status of a critically endangered language, as well as in the Law on the State Language.

The Livonians have successfully preserved their linguistic and cultural peculiarities to the present day, while continuing developing a modern culture and being part of the contemporary cultural space of Latvia.

It is also worth mentioning that this year, in order to mark Latvia’s membership as guest country at the London Book Fair, there will be published а poetry anthology by three contemporary Livonian poets – Baiba Damberga, Valts Ernštreits and Ķempi Kārl. Its title is “Trilium” and the book will be in Livonian and supplemented with English translations.

Information source:

Valts Ernštreits, Līvõ kultūr sidām, +37126424566

info@livones.net; www.livones.net