Fri, 19 March 2010
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All living Livonians can fit into a single room...Once every two years they pretty much do, when representatives of this tiny Latvian ethnic minority gather in their cultural centre in this seaside village to discuss their future.
This indigenous ethnic group, like their language -- Livonian -- is on the verge of extinction.
Latvian media recently reported that the last native speaker of Livonian died in February. However, Livonians themselves believe he may not be the last.
"People have been talking about the last (native) Livonian (speaker) dying and suddenl it emerges that he is very far from the last," Valts Ernstreins, 34, one of the leaders of Latvia's Livonian Cultural Centre told AFP.
He says he knows of five native Livonian speakers living on three continents.
In Latvia, the recently deceased Viktors Bertholds belonged to the last generation of children who started their primary Latvian-language school as Livonian monolinguals.
Thought to be born in 1921, Bertholds avoided being mobilized in either the Soviet army which occupied Latvia in 1940 or German forces that took it over a year later.
After Latvia regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Bertholds taught Livonian in children's summer camps.
"If you think about numbers, then of course, it does not look very good," says Ernstreins, who also owns a cozy store stuffed with Livonian paraphernalia in the Latvian capital, Riga.
Still he is stubbornly optimistic about the future of his tiny ethnic group: "The culture is going to live."
He's convinced the next generation of Livonians will promote their culture and the language and save the cultural links connecting Latvians with their northern Estonian neighbours.
"You can't work if you're pessimistic. It's that simple," he says.
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