November 18- Happy birthday my country!

My present to my beloved Latvia: Lielvārdes belt bracelet. The belt of Lielvarde is a woven ornamental belt with 22 ancient symbols that has become a symbol of Latvian national identity: God’s symbol, Mara symbol, Laima’s symbols, the Well symbol, the Sun symbol, the Fortune cross, Jumis, the Life symbol, the Cross of Crosses and others.  The pattern of the belt contains the code of the universe. My created bracelet contains only very small part of this belt.

A short history of Latvia.

94 years are a lot of in human life, but for a country it is so short period. Latvia has always been the target of many nations, because of it's strategic location. In the 12th century German traders and preachers established settlements in Latvia. The largest of them, Riga, founded in 1201 became part of the Hanseatic trading alliance.

In the following centuries the neighboring lands occupied Latvia. In the 16th century Latvia became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom, but in the 17th century it came under Swedish rule for a century, often remembered as the golden era compared to other occupiers. In the 18th century Russia was victorious in the northern wars, bringing all of what is now Latvia into Imperial Russia. Russian influence weakened after the Grand Revolution, and Latvia retained independence after the First World War in a war against German and Russian forces. The devastated country had a brief period of democracy and economic recovery, but a coup in 1934 established a nationalist dictatorship. The new regime tried to keep it's neutrality and independency in the early years of the Second World War, but it's fate was decided by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Soviet troops re-occupied Latvia, and remained under communist dictatorship till 1991.