‘We have a strange destiny’: a conversation with the Livonian poet <PERSON>: Part I · Global Voices
Livonian poet and language activist <PERSON>. Photo used with permission.
There are only around 250 of them left in Latvia today, many scattered far from the coastline which bears their name.
Theirs is a Finnic language related to Finnish and Estonian. Hundreds of years ago it was spoken throughout much of Latvia, but as its speakers assimilated into the surrounding population, Livonian began a slow and steady decline. By the 20th century it was confined to a few hundred speakers, concentrated mostly in a few remote fishing villages in Kurzeme, a province in western Latvia.
When Latvia came under Moscow's rule, these coastal areas formed the western border of the Soviet Union and were largely taken over by the military. Access was restricted, and Livonians were prevented from fishing. Many abandoned their traditional homeland.
It is thought that the last native speaker of Livonian was <PERSON>, who died in 2013 in Canada, where she had settled after fleeing Latvia in 1944. But since the restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991, the language has seen a slow revival as a small number of people with Livonian heritage or with an interest in its culture have started to learn and promote the language.
One of them is the Livonian poet and translator <PERSON>, who is currently the director of the Livonian Institute, founded in 2018, at the University of Latvia in the capital city Rīga. I spoke with <PERSON> about the past and present of the Livonian language and what he is doing to ensure that it has a future. The interview has been edited for style and brevity.
<PERSON>: What do you think the importance is of having a Livonian Institute?
<PERSON>: I think we’ve done pretty well. 811
We started in autumn 2018 with zero employees and zero money. Now we’re already running three projects – we are expecting to get one or two more this year – and there are already nine people on the staff.
The Livonian Institute is quite important: first of all for Latvia, because Livonians are a part of Latvia; that’s one area that is pretty under-researched […] This is the first serious attempt for Latvia to enter the Finno-Ugric world in terms of science, and it is also exploiting the fact that there are only a few countries in Europe who have indigenous people, and Latvia is one of them. Although it’s not usual in Latvia to think in these terms: that Latvia does have indigenous people. Somehow on very many occasions it seems for people kind of surprising, but it’s true.
Because the Livonians have quite a strange destiny: there are very very few Livonians, but they still exist. This is something that the world can benefit from – from the Livonian experience, and this is we as an institute can also offer, because by researching Livonians, by researching various aspects of it, we can kind of find a formula for resistance against the world, or a formula for survival.
What I mean by resistance against the world is how to survive in very harsh conditions – because if we compare this to very many indigenous people, and not only indigenous people […] In the 19th century there were two and a half thousand Livonians, which is an extremely small number – that’s a village in Great Britain, I guess. Despite that, 200 years later Livonians still exist, and that’s even without speaking about two world wars, which destroyed the Livonian coast entirely, and the border area that erased the existence of the Livonian-speaking area in general. During all that, the Livonians have managed somehow to survive. So maybe that’s something we can offer to others: how to survive 200 years longer – if two and a half thousand people can do it, everyone can.
WM: So will Livonian be the example for other languages in Europe?
<PERSON>: Yes, because if you can use this for Livonians, you can use it for very many cases. Because the Livonians are an extreme case for an endangered nation, because it’s really very small and it has very many problems that others don’t have, like for example lacking [a distinct] area – for many endangered languages, this is not a problem, because it’s a village language or the language of a certain region.
One project we've launched its to collect Livonian place names. So to be precise, because some people tend to get confused about it: not place names of Livonian origin, but place names in the Livonian language.
WM: So just to clarify, that wouldn’t just be on the Livonian Coast – that could also be here [in Rīga], for example? 811