Every year, new Latvian traditions, customs, and skills are added to the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage - from making fishing nets to folk 'mushroom picking'. Today, the inclusion of six new values has been confirmed.
One of them is playing the accordion (ermoņika). This instrument was once hard to imagine being absent from weddings, balls, or village gatherings in Latgale. An accordion festival is held annually in the village of Medneva, which keeps the living musical tradition alive.
"It is pleasing that both young people are learning to play the accordion and they enjoy it: only from the 'accordion' can you extract exactly the sound you want," says the head of the Medneva Community Center, Skaidrite Šaicāne.
Previously, the list included the cultural spaces of the Suiti, Livs, as well as Rucava, Nīca, Bārta, and Piebalga. Now, the cultural space of Nautrenu in Latgale has joined them.
Status in the list helps to preserve traditions, increase recognition, and participate in projects to attract additional funding.
The list also includes the bathing tradition and novus - a Latvian national tabletop game similar to portable simplified billiards. Another new entry is the catching of eels in Salaca and Svetupe.
"Many do not know that we are engaged in this. They see eels at the market and think they are from Lithuania or elsewhere. But it turns out they are local," says Nikolai Kolushkin, the owner of a traditional eel dam (tača) on Svetupe, as reported by LSM.lv.
A separate decision has granted status to toloka - communal public work. In recent years, the movement has gained new momentum thanks to the annual Great Toloka aimed at cleaning and improving the entire country.
"We have manure, potato, haymaking toloks - this is a very common form of work. It is important to say that this is also heritage: it has its own folklore environment, its own customs, special dishes with the hostess by the hearth. Today, 'digital' toloks have also been added to them," emphasizes intangible heritage expert Gita Lānczere.
The national list of intangible cultural heritage has been maintained since 2017. It now includes 46 values.
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