While the region that is now Latvia has been inhabited for a long time, the Latvian language and the idea of Latvia as a country are much younger. The ancestors of modern day Latvians and Lithuanians (Balts) first arrived in the Baltics (the modern day countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) in about 2000 B.C.E, while the ancestors of Estonians and Finns had already arrived about 1000 years earlier. Tacitus, a Roman historian, mentioned the Balts and described them as farmers and amber gatherers, as they traded amber, which often washes up on the beaches in Latvia, with the Roman Empire. This is the earliest written evidence of the Balts’ existence. During the Migration Period from 400 C.E. to 600 C.E. (A large movement of people in Europe) the Latgallians, a group of Balts, moved into present-day Latvia and forced out the Livs, a group of Finns. From the 700s to the 900s C.E. the inhabitants of Latvia were raided by Vikings from Scandinavia, but the Vikings never succeeded in gaining a real foothold or establishing colonies, and some of the Baltic tribes even carried out their own raids back across the Baltic sea.
During the Medieval Era the lords of the Baltics built several castles to defend their lands (Source: Ambermarks.com)
In the 12th century A.D. other European states started to Christianize the area of Latvia. Russian leaders, who had already converted to Orthodox christianity by 1000 C.E., fought with the local leaders in the Baltics, and by the end of the 1100s all the Proto-Latvian rulers at least claimed to be Orthodox Christians. Around the same time German merchants began to travel to the Baltics to trade, and in 1164 a German priest named Meinhard arrived and began spreading Catholicism. The Catholic Church appointed him as the bishop of Livonia, a region which included present day Latvia and Estonia. The German nobles soon became the ruling class of Livonia. When Meinhard’s conversion efforts were proving unsuccessful he asked the Pope for military assistance, so a crusade was called, and though Meinhard died before the crusaders arrived it did succeed at forcing the Livonians to convert to Catholiscism. In 1201 German traders founded Riga, which is now the capital of Latvia and the largest city in the country,containing roughly half the population. In 1282 Riga joined the Hanseatic League, a trading group made up of cities throughout the Baltic Sea.
A map showing the cities in Northern Europe belonging to the Hanseatic League
(Source: latvianhistory.com)
During the Reformation, when Protestant Christians split from the Catholic Church, the majority of Latvians converted to Lutheranism, as they were ruled by the Germans, and the Reformation began in Northern Germany. The Germans continued to rule until 1561-86 C.E., when Livonia collapsed as result of Russian attacks, and most of its former territory came under Polish rule. In 1585 and 1586 the first books were printed in Latvian, and the complete translation of the Christian Bible into Latvian in 1685 marked the completion of the language.