Deep Baltic

Interesting to see Latgalian added to Google Translate. Wondering how it would cope with the northern forms - this is from a Catholic church in Viļaka in remote N Latgale.

Water is "ūdens" in Latvian, "iudiņs" in "standard" Latgalian (quotes used advisedly), here "yudeņs"

Gabrielius Landsbergis: “[…] in the world of Putin and Lukashenko there is no place for Lithuania, or for any small country. By ejecting Svetlana, Lithuania is helping to create that world.”

Today is a big day for the Dievturība (native faith) movement in Latvia, as Latvia becomes the first country in Europe to enshrine the place of its pagan religion in law

Saying What You Mean: Trends in Recent Latvian Poetry "The younger generation avoids assuming the role of speaking for the nation, a function that writers were expected to fulfil, and often did during the Soviet occupation"

"Being direct can take many forms, and I note here in passing that Russian Latvian poets like Artūrs Punte and Jeļena Glazova... have made an unmistakable statement by switching to Latvian."

deepbaltic.com/2025/10/07/s...

#CountriesInASongOrMovie
🎵 Part Time Latvia 🇱🇻

Saying What You Mean: Trends in Recent Latvian Poetry "The younger generation avoids assuming the role of speaking for the nation, a function that writers were expected to fulfil, and often did during the Soviet occupation"

Playfulness, radical openness, resistance to speaking "for the nation", an adoring approach to immediate predecessors, and a more precarious geopolitical situation seeming to prompt more plain-spokenness – Lauris Veips gives an overview of Latvian poetry

deepbaltic.com/2025/10/07/s...

Merkel’s words shock the Baltics – Kariņš responds to the former Chancellor - Baltic News Network The statements about the role of the Baltic States in allegedly provoking Russia’s aggression reflect a fundamental misunderstanding.

1/2 Former Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš: "At that time, many countries did not understand Russia — including Germany and the former chancellor herself. I consistently told her that you cannot deal with Putin ‘in good faith,’ but she believed that the Baltic States were wrong. I was well

#AlphabetChallenge
#WeekOforOpulent
Day 1 Rundāle Palace, #Latvia

You may see quite a bit of this place over the week

I really want to make an episode explaining why exactly Latgale is Latvia's Texas. It's darn true tho.

Estonia’s road to comprehensive security | Heinrich Böll Stiftung | Warszawa | Polska Since regaining independence in 1991, Estonia has undergone a rapid and determined transformation, embracing modernization, democracy and western integration. Yet its path to NATO membership and secur...

My recent essay for @neweasterneurope.eu discussing some dire #military legacies left by Soviet occupation & the #geopolitical obstacles that #Estonia 🇪🇪 overcame to modernize its national #security system is now also fully available online thanks to @boell.de. pl.boell.org/en/2025/07/2...

The Haspoth #castle in what was then Courland served the #knights of the Livonian Teutonic Knights as a supply and overnight stop on their way from Livonia to their regions to the west. Today, there is little evidence of this in the #Latvian town of #Aizpute.
#prussia

False Alarms: and Real Ones A Russian landgrab in Estonia in 2028 would destroy NATO. Western scaremongering about the Baltics’ vulnerability is missing the real threat.

False Alarms: and Real Ones | "Western scaremongering about the Baltics’ vulnerability is missing the real threat." @edwardlucas.bsky.social

On what is allegedly the best bar in the Baltics

www.instagram.com/balticsunder...

Making Estonia, Shaping Setomaa: the Creation of Interwar Estonia and its Impact on the Southeastern Borderland - Eesti Elu In 2020, Värska unveiled a monument to the soldiers of the Estonian War of Independence (1918-1920) in its Freedom Square. As the inscription on its base indicates, this monument was intended to be pl...

Big thanks to the Toronto Estonian community for featuring my piece on the integration of Setomaa into Interwar Estonia 🇪🇪
eestielu.ca/making-eston...

Finnic and Baltic languages are the only ones to use the different word for Finns and Finland: suomi, soome, suomija, somija and so on. Nice to see the Livonian variant of the word.

I went a bit mad in the Vilnius souvenir shops, but you don’t know you need a chocolate map of the ethnographic regions of Lithuania until you see a chocolate map of the ethnographic regions of Lithuania

figure dressed in a black suit, carrying a stringed instrument in each hand, strides across a courtyard, buildings with stark windows behind them - circa late 1960's - early 1970s Kaunas

farmland with prominent flowering tree, in the distance a horse, and children playing, lines of fir trees framing a pond, soft afternoon sun

Blooming(s) series, person on bicycle, partially obscured by lovely flowering trees with low hanging branches, small child circa 1982

small child tenderly holding a white rabbit as they walk down a petal strewn dirt road through farmland, flowering trees lined to the right

Romualdas Rakauskas

Lithuanian
photographer

Finally got round recently to reading this book I've had for a while - a lovely concept: guides to countries that don't exist anymore. Their new one is on the Habsburg Empire.

Would be fun, though challenging, to try to do one on the fairly bizarre Duchy of Courland

The 'Nordic' escape you didn't know existed With Swedish farmhouses, Viking churches and €4 fika, Estonia feels profoundly Nordic, without the eye-watering price tag.

Estonia- “the unsung Nordic nation.” Another article by the BBC on why you should visit Estonia 🇪🇪 www.bbc.com/travel/artic... #estonia #nordics

A cat statue on top of a rooftop

The Cat House, Riga, Latvia for #BlueSkyMonday #Riga #Latvia #Travel #Photography #EastCoastKin

Lithuanian Graveyard

Lithuanian Graveyard https://www.wikiart.org/en/mikalojus-ciurlionis/lithuanian-graveyard-1909

A nice list of false friends between two languages that are not as close as many people think.

Was recently chatting to a Lithuanian who was doing project work in Riga, and he was v amused his boss was called Ģirts (which, as shown here, very nearly means "drunk" in LT)

Flashback to 1998 when I wrote a paper about John Wilbye in (bad) Lithuanian, I wish I still had this level of confidence in the language

✈️🎯 Did you know that Baltic airspace is partly guarded by Hungary’s four Gripen fighter jets stationed in Šiauliai, Lithuania?

It’s astonishing that the EU’s most pro-Kremlin country—led by Viktor Orbán and addicted to Russian fossil fuels—is still trusted to such a degree.

this month's Observer column is out! I tried to see if I could like basketball and instead I just became obsessed with...Lithuania? observer.co.uk/news/columni...

Britain arrests trio of suspected Russian saboteurs UK police allege Russia-linked spying, as Lithuania and Latvia uncover sabotage plots.

UK police allege Russia-linked spying, as Lithuania and Latvia uncover sabotage plots.

Lithuania says it busted Russian-linked network that planned terror attacks in Europe Lithuanian prosecutors said Wednesday they uncovered a network of suspects who planned to carry out four terrorist attac...

Lithuania has revealed a Russian-linked network that planned terrorist attacks across Europe in 2024. Homemade incendiary devices were sent via parcels to the UK, Poland, and Germany.

www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-e...

The Perils of Irresponsible Reporting on Russia’s War Clickbait coverage is the Kremlin’s friend. Just ask the Estonians.

Given the stakes, questions of Estonia’s security should be framed with precision and facts, not fearmongering and speculation.

Some very interesting art in the Curonian Spit, on the Baltic Sea Coast of Lithuania.

Tallinn!