Latvia

There are a couple of problems with this map: n the Southwest, Lake Liepaja is shown as a small bay open to the sea (apparently a frequent error in maps of Latvia), there are some spelling mistakes perhaps caused by transliteration from Russian maps, and the administrative divisions are out of date. But as a UN map, it is in the public domain. A more up-to-date map showing the post-2009 administrative divisions is here.

The name "Latvija" derives from the Latgallians, one of four Baltic tribes, who along with Couronians, Selonians and Semigallians formed the ancient ethnic core of today's Latvian people.Latvian is a member of the Baltic language group of Indo-European languages Livonian, a nearly extinct ancient Finnic language, and Lagallian, forerunner of Latvian, both enjoy legal protection. Russian, which at one time was spoken by almost all of the population, is not protected, and only recently have the children of Russian-ethnic people been born into Lativan citizenship, both reactions to the Soviet hegenomy over the Baltic states. The capital of Latvia is Riga.

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.Original uploader was Digital1 at lv.wikipedia For full attribution see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rigas_mozaika.png

Riga was founded in 1201 and is not only the capital of Latvia but the largest city in all the Baltic states, home to one third of the Latvian population and a center of trade and commerce for the whole Baltic region. In 2014 it will be the official "European Capital of Culture"