" I came away from my time in Latvia with a very positive view of how the teaching of natural history and respect for the environment is an important part of the national psyche. In a country so closely tied to its forests and lakes and very aware of the cyclical nature of the world this is to be expected," 

 Mike Rutherford, Kelvingrove Museum

In June this year I took part in a trip to Latvia organised by Archnetwork and funded by the Leonardo da Vinci programme of the European Commission. The aim of the trip was to find out more about training methods and dissemination of information about the natural and cultural history of Latvia.

Trip Diary

6/6/09

The group of six participants flew from Prestwick Airport to Riga in the evening. After collecting our rental van we drove to our accommodation for the first two nights – Hotel Metropole on the edge of the old town in Riga.

7/6/09

After breakfast we meet our main guide and the organiser of the rest of the programme Maija Malnaca. We then drove to Riga Zoo and were greeted by Daiga Leimane – a guide at the zoo. We started with the European reptile house where some of the zoo’s successful breeding programmes had taken place. Endangered European tree frogs had been reintroduced into parts of Latvia after being breed at the zoo. As Daiga led us round the zoo she also gave talks in Latvian to the public, these included the flamingos, hippos and meerkats.

That afternoon we went to the Open Air Museum on the edge of Riga. This impressive collection of Latvian wooden buildings is spread through a forest so as you wander the paths you come across a wide range of houses, churches, barns and cabins which have been moved there from all over Latvia. We also had a look round a craft market which was taking place in the park showcasing all sorts of products including wood, leather, wicker, pottery, amber, metalwork and so on.

That evening Maija took us on a tour round Riga, after dinner at a Lido restaurant we looked at some of the old town then went up to the top floor of a skyscraper where we were afforded wonderful views of the city and surrounding countryside – very flat!

8/6/09

We drove to the town of Talsi in the west of Latvia. At the local tourist information centre we met Inese Roze the manager of tourism for the region. She gave us a tour round Talsi including a trip to a local bakery where we were invited to have a go at making some of the local pastries. After coffee we headed out of town to the privately owned and run Laumas Nature Park. An area of poor agricultural land part covered in bogs and forest had been transformed into a popular park with lodges, play-parks, nature trails and campsite. We all went on the Bee Trail and the Sport Trail before sampling the pancakes in the on-site café.

Photo 1 – Inese showing the group one of the lakes and hills of Talsi

Then it was back to Talsi for a walking tour and a talk by Inese on the history of the town and the development of the tourism industry for the area. We then headed out of town again to Sabile, on the way we stopped to climb a large wooden tower in a forest to get views of the countryside. In Sabile we visited the most northerly grape vines in the world and sampled some of the wine.

Finally we went to Pedvale Open Air Museum which was an old farm that had been turned into a venue for huge artworks. These were made from all sorts of materials including a giant ball made of TV screens, wooden totem poles, giant chairs made from oil drums and huge cinema screen sized paintings all spread over several hectares. That evening we drove to Tervete to a guest house where we would stay for the next two nights.

9/6/09

Off to Tervete Nature Park’s brand new visitor centre where we met members of the Latvian State Forest including Lilita Bogdane. After an introductory talk and a tour round the centre we headed off into the forest in a mini road train. We were shown the various trails through the Fairy Tale Forest where we saw the dwarf village, the King and his court and finally the Witch’s Forest. We followed this up with a visit to the workshops of the carpenters who made all the signs, models and buildings in the forest.

Photo 2 – Meeting the witch and sampling her brew

We then had a short visit to the Tervete History Museum where we saw original and replica pieces of jewellery, weapons and tools from the time of the Zemgalians. There were also arms and armour available for visitors to try on and I couldn’t resist dressing up in a mail shirt, helmet and trying out a shield and axe.

That afternoon we headed to Rundales Castle, a very impressive 18th century palace inspired by Versaille. We toured around the main rooms looking at the stunning decorations. After that we headed to Jelgava for dinner and had a short walking tour around the town seeing an amazing Orthodox church and Jelgava Palace.

10/6/09

We had an early start as we had a long drive to get to Pakalniesi near the town of Madona. The visitor centre at Pakalniesi is run by the State Forest Service as an educational establishment. The staff, led by Inese Mailte, gave us a talk on the forestry service in Latvia and then demonstrated the various workshops that they do for school groups. These included a look at different types of trees, using your senses to investigate the forest, mammals of the forest and animal homes.

For lunch we went to the Lido hotel then on to Gaizinkalns Nature Park. We climbed the highest peak in Latvia then some of us used the aerial runway to get back down. We then headed back to Pakalniesi for more examples of workshops which included all of us dressing up as various plants and animals before having a shot on the wooden merry-go-round.

That evening we went to the Brothers Jurjani Memorial Museum where we were treated to the amazing experience of a black sauna. After being basted in salt, coffee, beer and honey and plunging into ponds we all felt extremely relaxed and enjoyed a traditional Latvian meal of porridge and curdled milk whilst being entertained with our guides singing folk songs.

11/6/09

Drove to Sigulda, seeing two moose on the way, and headed to the Gauja National Park headquarters where we met Meldra Langenfelde and her staff. Meldra gave us a talk on the park and the work they do with volunteers and school groups before showing us some of the workshops they offer. We then went out into the park and stopped first at Gutmanala where we heard the tragic story of the Turaida Rose and saw many of the carvings in the walls of the sandstone cave.

Photo 3 – The group heading towards Turaida Castle

After lunch in Sigulda we attended the opening of a new shopping mall as the GNP team had a stall where staff were promoting the park and all the activities it had to offer. We then travelled to Turaida to meet a new guide, Indra, who showed us round the grounds of the Turaida Museum Reserve which included a manor house, a brick castle, an archaeology museum and sculptures. Indra sang us folk songs at various times and gave us a lot of interesting information on the area.

We then headed out to Krimulda church where we climbed the bell tower and then made floral crowns in the meadows. Finally we headed to Ragana for dinner at the Witch’s Tavern. Back to Sigulda we stayed the next two nights at the Parks Guest House.

12/6/09

We picked up Meldra in the morning and she then took us on a tour round the park. We started with Sietniezis rock which was an outcrop of white sandstone along the edge of the Gauja River, we met a local guide who gave us the history of the area. After an early lunch we headed on to a small visitor centre and an outcrop of red sandstone at Zvarte rock. We then joined a tour of the top secret Soviet bunker underneath a rehabilitation centre at Ligatne.

After coming up to civilization again we drove to Ligatne Visitor Centre in time to see the opening of a small photographic exhibition by one of the park employees. He had been to western Africa whilst taking part in the Alternative Paris-Dakar rally and had taken photos of the local people along the way. Another guide then took us round the Ligatne Nature Trail to see some of the local animals, we managed to spot the bear and the wild boar but the lynx proved too elusive. Meldra then took us to see the last ferry still operating across the Gauja river and I took the chance to collect some empty shells of river mussels.

13/6/09

In the morning of our last day we drove back to Riga and went to meet Maija again at the Natural History Museum. We looked around the museum including the new geology and paleontology displays on the 2^nd floor, the birds and mammals on the 3^rd floor, the insects, botany and marine displays on the 4^th floor and the environmental and anthropological displays on the 5^th floor. We were then given a tour of the new education facility on the top floor, with the different types of workshops explained.

After that we exchanged gifts with Maija who then took us out for lunch and after walking through the parks we headed to the old town. We all decided to visit The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, which gave the history of Latvia from the 1940’s till the 1990’s.

We then got in a bit of shopping before heading to the airport to bid goodbye to Latvia. We had driven hundreds of miles and seen everything from palaces to cowsheds, tasted local cuisines, sweated in saunas, and been extremely well treated by our very kind and giving hosts.

Knowledge gained from the exchange

For me the most rewarding places we visited were Riga Zoo and the Natural History Museum of Latvia. As a natural historian I was interested in the ways that information about animals was provided and who that information was aimed at.

Riga Zoo

I was very impressed with the reptile breeding programmes that were undertaken at the zoo. This year was the 20^th anniversary of the successful reintroduction of the European tree frog back in to the wild. The amphibian house had a good display set up – for casual visitors every species was named in Latvian, English and with its scientific name, for visitors who wanted more there were large information panels detailing everything from life cycles to the breeding programmes. The way this was done with information being separate but in the same room was a good lesson for doing similar displays in my museum.

Photo 4 – Large info panels can be seen on the right, small labels with the tanks.

Having to cater for multiple languages was a problem for some of the places we visited, many had information in Latvian, Russian and English but this led to a huge amount of text. One of the best examples of how to deal with this was at the zoo where symbols and pictures were used on the animal signs. This also has the advantage of being easily decipherable by children. As the signs in my museum come up for renewal I will be looking at using something similar.

Photo 5 – Sign for camels at Riga Zoo

The other main way of getting information across at the zoo was through talks given in front of various enclosures. This was good for the locals speaking Latvian but does present a problem for foreign tourists, we were fortunate on our visit as the person giving the talks was also our tour guide so she gave us translations afterwards. Something I am aware of in my museum is the lack of foreign language tours, we do provide basic guides in a few languages but these can’t compare with a spoken word tour. I will be looking at ways of getting more foreign language tours on offer at my museum in the future. I think it will be a while before I am able to give talks in any language except English but the fact that the guides we had throughout Latvia were giving detailed talks in a second language has inspired me to look at going back to work on my school boy French for a start.

Natural History Museum

Seeing the museum had been my most anticipated part of the tour and it did not disappoint. The range of displays was very broad as the museum is slowly going through a refurbishment when finances allow.

The second floor contains a brand new geology and palaeontology gallery. These included some of the most innovative interactive displays I have ever seen and made me quite jealous. The large model describing the range of volcanoes and the earthquake simulator were both simple, robust displays which got across a lot of information which is the best type of display in my opinion. Although all the labels were in Latvian I could still understand the concepts and come away having learned something.

Photo 6 – A model showing types of volcanoes, next to a case with volcanic rocks, a video showing types of eruptions and a map of the volcanoes of the world.

The display of fossils was equally new and refreshing. Some cases were embedded in the floor to give a feeling almost of discovering the fossil yourself. Large animatronic models in small cases gave you a feeling of peeking into a lost world and some brilliant hands on puzzles allowed you to piece together some of the past for yourself. The best of these and one that I will definitely be using in the future in some way was the fish model. It consisted of a 3D jigsaw of a prehistoric armoured fish and a Perspex screen with holes in to allow the jigsaw to be completed but keep all the pieces safe from being lost or stolen.

Photo 7 – 3D fish jigsaw in a case

The mineral displays were quite old fashioned in style but this was the area that the curators were going to be working on next.

The third floor had displays of birds and mammals from Latvia and all over the world. It was several decades old and the labels were in Russian and Latvian but the quality and range of the specimens still made the place look good. Some new displays had been added such as the results of a bird photography competition and one the work of CITES in protecting endangered species. These sorts of ideas were very similar to past and present displays in my museum and so didn’t present a great deal of new information for me.

The fourth floor had some fantastic cases for the entomology. Mini dioramas that looked quite stylised and modern but still got across the features of the habitat that the animals lived in. In my museum dioramas were looked at as old fashioned by the design team much to the chagrin of the curators. I would feel quite confident to take photos of the cases in the entomology gallery to my designers and show them how dioramas can look modern and be of great use in getting across information.

Photo 8 – Mini insect dioramas

It was nice to see a lot of large specimens on open display in the Life in the Sea gallery. It is something we have done a lot of in my museum and it has always gone down well with the public. I never had the opportunity to ask but I am curious as to how the specimens fare under the hands of the public and if there is much, if any, damage done.

The fifth floor had great displays on the ethnogenesis of Latvians with some very nicely designed cases and some good features. The slightly older human evolution gallery next door had a strong Soviet flavour to it but was very fascinating none the less. Some of the ideas were quite dated but I still liked the use of large models that people could touch and feel that that sort of thing would go down well in my museum.

There was also a display on humans and the environment showing some of the problems (and solutions) facing mankind today. It was a text heavy area so it was difficult for a non-Latvian speaker to gain a deeper understanding but I could still get the basic concepts due to the great graphics and interactives.

The place I was most jealous of and just wanted to steal for my museum straight away was the Activity Area on the sixth floor. This new area had a great hands-on display showing the life of a badger through the seasons. This included all the plants and animals that live around the badger and how they change throughout the year. It was full of information but managed to look great fun at the same time. A mixture of mounted animals, models, graphics and manual handling activities made it a fantastic learning tool. At my museum we are currently working on redoing a similar area called the Environment Discovery Centre and I will be taking quite few ideas from Latvia with me to those discussions. The rest of the activity area had some more great workshops – digging for fossils in a cave, learning about different regions and biospheres with an amazing multilayered map, looking at the solar system with modern orreries.

Photo 9 – Part of the seasonal story of the badger in the activity centre

The rest

One thing that I greatly enjoyed throughout the trip was all the walking tours with guides, I don’t normally seek out talks when I travel or visit other museums as I prefer to find out the information myself. However after my experiences in Latvia, where some talks even included singing, I will be much more likely to seek them out in the future. I’m not sure if I will be singing in any of my future talks but it really adds something to a tour.

We saw many great ideas for nature based workshops in Latvia, using all sorts of materials and objects. Some were similar to ones that I already use but I got many more ideas for future talks. Using smell, touch and hearing as much as sight seemed to be quite popular, developing the use of the other senses is a good way to go and could prove especially useful with disabled groups.

Photo 10 – The group getting a talk from guides at Pakalniesi. Lots of specimens to handle!

I came away from my time in Latvia with a very positive view of how the teaching of natural history and respect for the environment is an important part of the national psyche. In a country so closely tied to its forests and lakes and very aware of the cyclical nature of the world this is to be expected, I just hope I can take some of that and try and bring it back to Scotland.

Dissemination

I will be giving a talk to my colleagues in Glasgow Museums on my experiences in Latvia and hopefully passing on some of the ideas I encountered, I am also writing an article for the museums magazine, Preview, which will be available in October. On a personal note I have also been extolling the virtues of Latvia to friends and family as a holiday destination and I’m sure some of them will be heading there soon.

Future Plans

In the future I would like to see if further links can be developed with the natural history museum as they had some wonderful collections. Depending on where my museum research takes me in the future I may want access to certain specimens and I hope that I could also help provide information and or specimens to any researchers based in Riga.

I would also be very happy and willing to act as a host for any group of Latvians, or indeed any other nationality, who would like to come and see how natural history is used and promoted in Scotland.