It was the first week of August and the Livo­ni­an youth camp was draw­ing to a close. We spent our final night togeth­er watch­ing the sun set at Īra beach down the coast, singing songs and cook­ing sausages over the open flame of our camp­fire. The next day Irē began to fill with out­siders. The fields were sud­den­ly packed with parked cars and an ocean of peo­ple streamed through the town. Lis­ten­ing to them speak, I soon noticed that not only were the­se peo­ple not Livo­ni­an (and real­ly, what a sur­prise that would’ve been, find­ing some unknown mass of Livo­ni­ans sud­den­ly descend­ing on their ancient home­land) they were also not Lat­vian. The Livo­ni­an Fes­ti­val appar­ent­ly attract­ed a great deal of Esto­ni­ans along with a small­er num­ber of peo­ple from oth­er coun­tries. Esto­ni­an and Livo­ni­an are not mutu­al­ly intel­li­gi­ble, but they share many sim­i­lar­i­ties. For a moment I won­dered, whether this is the clos­est I would ever get to know­ing what the coast was like when Livo­ni­an was still spo­ken by a major­i­ty of its res­i­dents.

The Livo­ni­an Fes­ti­val was a day filled with choral and dance per­for­mances, some Livo­ni­an, oth­ers from Latvia and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. Along with the per­for­mances, a litany of dig­ni­taries spoke rep­re­sent­ing the Lat­vian gov­ern­ment and those of the Finnic-speak­ing nations of Europe. In this pic­ture, a Livo­ni­an folk ensem­ble stands on the steps of the Nation­al Hall. The entrance adorned with a gar­land, a Livo­ni­an flag gen­tly flut­ters over­head.

Today there are less than two hun­dred indi­vid­u­als in Latvia that iden­ti­fy them­selves as Livo­ni­an. Less than ten are native speak­ers of the lan­guage. Most of them are elder­ly. As I lis­tened to the folk ensem­ble per­form, I turned my atten­tion to the audi­ence. There was Poulīn, in the red dress, per­haps the most famed native speak­er. I knew her, but sur­round­ing her were a num­ber of oth­er peo­ple, oth­er speak­ers of the lan­guage. Usu­al­ly, it seems like nations are large undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed mass­es of peo­ple. But just a few feet away from me was the core of an entire nation, gath­ered togeth­er under the shad­ow of a sin­gle tree.

The choral and dance per­for­mances had end­ed for the time being. The crowd began to drift away from the Nation­al Hall at the cen­ter of town. Many flocked to the con­ces­sion stands set up through­out the com­mu­ni­ty. As I walked away, I saw Poulīn. I had got­ten to know her dur­ing the course of the last few weeks. I fig­ured I was prob­a­bly more excit­ed to see her than she was to see me, after all she was one of a kind, and I was one of many flock­ing to this place, eager to hear her sto­ries and her lan­guage. But in her typ­i­cal style, she rec­og­nized me and invit­ed me to sit down with her and the oth­er ladies in this pic­ture. I lis­tened to them speak, and I under­stood that by sheer chance I had come to be part of a very spe­cial con­ver­sa­tion. The lan­guage the­se wom­en were con­vers­ing in was Livo­ni­an. I could hard­ly believe it, and they kind­ly allowed me to speak with them, using the bro­ken Livo­ni­an I had taught myself over the course of the past months and years. I would lat­er think how strange it was that in that moment in the entire world, this was like­ly the only con­ver­sa­tion tak­ing place in this lan­guage. I did not leave the coast that sum­mer a flu­ent speak­er, but the knowl­edge I did pos­sess was due to the­se few pre­cious chances I had to actu­al­ly use it thanks to the gen­eros­i­ty of Poulīn and the oth­er speak­ers I had met.

After speak­ing with the ladies for a while, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a pic­ture tak­en sit­ting next to Poulīn.

After the end of the day’s per­for­mances, the fes­ti­val moved to the beach. A wreath was placed in the ocean as an offer­ing to Mier­jemā, Ocean Moth­er. The sun shone bright­ly that day. Poulīn said some things in Livo­ni­an as the breeze flut­tered the cos­tumes of those in tra­di­tion­al dress. In the days fol­low­ing the fes­ti­val I would hike with sev­er­al of the teach­ers from the camp through the forests and vil­lages of the coast. Sev­er­al kilo­me­ters north of Irē we would find the wreath washed up on the shore. I laughed, not think­ing that it real­ly took away from the beau­ty of the moment when the wreath had been offered to the ocean. Rather it was like peer­ing behind the cur­tain and see­ing into the true nature of things. All of us have prob­a­bly released heli­um bal­loons into the air or dropped bot­tles with mes­sages into the ocean, but how many of us have seen where they end up. I was lucky to see the full cycle, to see what Mier­jemā was doing with all those wreaths that had been sent to her over the years.

Mem­bers of a Livo­ni­an folk ensem­ble step gin­ger­ly into the crisp waters of the Baltic. A mys­te­ri­ous horned stranger stands in the fore­ground.

I nev­er real­ly got to know this man. I saw him walk­ing around the fes­ti­val, and see­ing him on the beach again, I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take his pic­ture, which he glad­ly agreed to. We didn’t share a com­mon lan­guage, so I nev­er learned the sig­nif­i­cance of the Viking hel­met. I want­ed to ask him where he got his shirt. It had a Livo­ni­an flag on it with the words Līvõ Repub­lik (Livo­ni­an Repub­lic). It seemed like a neat sou­venir, but it must have been from an ear­lier year, as I saw none for sale when I was there. Luck­i­ly, a friend of mine was able to get me one of the posters adver­tis­ing the fes­ti­val, which was nice too.

The fes­ti­val was com­ing to an end, and I still had to pack a few things. I was spend­ing the night in Pizā with some of the teach­ers from the camp. Tomor­row we would start on a three-day hike along the coast, explor­ing each of the Livo­ni­an towns along our way. Walk­ing back to my room, the sun was already hang­ing low in the sky. The world col­ored in soft hues by the approach­ing evening.

As I turned and looked across the field, I saw a group of folk dancers walk­ing towards me. We met halfway, and think­ing they were Lat­vian, I greet­ed them in my native lan­guage. They smiled and answered me in Esto­ni­an. I tried Eng­lish, they tried Rus­sian. Again no luck. We stood there smil­ing, exud­ing untold amounts of good­will, with­out being able to com­mu­ni­cate it. Sud­den­ly, I had a crazy idea. I addressed them in Livo­ni­an. It’s all I could think to do at that moment, and it didn’t real­ly seem like such a bad idea. After all, Livo­ni­an and Esto­ni­an are fair­ly close­ly relat­ed, and I had always heard that speak­ers of the­se lan­guages could under­stand each oth­er. Esto­ni­an-speak­ing fish­er­men from Saare­maa, to the north, had long been inter­act­ing with the Livo­ni­an-speak­ing fish­er­men of the coast. The ladies looked at each oth­er, and answered me back in what seemed like a very mea­sured Esto­ni­an, geared towards my under­stand­ing. All of a sud­den we were speak­ing to each oth­er, tran­scend­ing the bound­aries of lan­guage. It was a sub­lime moment. A few weeks lat­er, I would try this trick again, at a news­stand in Tar­tu. But this time it didn’t work quite as well. The wom­an work­ing there gave me a sort of bewil­dered wide-eyed stare that could have con­veyed many things, but I felt under­stand­ing was prob­a­bly not one of them.