If you have read the long version, you know what Dainu Kalns is and how it got built between 1980 and 1985 while Latvia was still occupied. This is the companion piece. It is the field guide you bring with you on the hill, because the on-site plaques are mostly in Latvian and the English signage is thin. Every one of Indulis Ranka’s twenty-six granite sculptures, the daina (or in two cases, the pair of dainas) it carries, the year it was placed, and the order in which a sensible walk takes them in.
The English text below is drawn from the museum’s own published guide to Folk Song Park, with my notes from many walks of the hill added where the booklet runs short. If you want the booklet on paper, ask at the visitors centre by the underground granary at the entrance to the reserve.
Short answer, before the long version
- 26 sculptures, all by Indulis Ranka, all granite, scattered across roughly three hectares on the south-eastern slope of the Turaida Museum Reserve.
- Placed between 1982 and 2010. The earliest is Veļu akmens, the Stone of the Dear Departed, placed at a Liv burial site in autumn 1982. The most recent in the catalogue is the two-part Krauklīša spārns — dārgumu krātuve, Raven’s Wing — Storehouse of Treasure, installed in 2004 at the Dalai Lama’s request.
- Numbered 1 to 26 on the official map, which is also the rough walking order if you enter from the visitors centre side and finish near the Song Garden amphitheatre.
- Each sculpture carries a daina, usually engraved on it in Latvian. Many of the dainas were ones Krišjānis Barons collected himself between 1878 and 1915 and published in the six volumes of Latvju Dainas.
- Allow two to three hours for a slow walk through all 26, plus the Song Garden. Most visitors give it twenty minutes and miss the point.
How to use this guide on the hill
The numbered map at the entrance kiosk lists the 26 sculptures in walking order. Walk it that way. The order is not random — the architects Jānis Rozentāls and Ilgvars Batrags laid out the paths so the sculptures move you through the daina cycle: birth and song first, then the gods and the calendar, then the life cycle, then the great folkloric figures, then the natural world, and out to the river at the end with water and pike.
For each entry below you get: the English title, the Latvian original, the daina line that is engraved on or associated with the stone (where the booklet gives one), and a note on what the sculpture is doing and when Ranka placed it. Sculptures that pair on a single base or share a write-up in the museum guide are listed together.
Two practical things to know on the day. First, the plaques on the hill are mostly Latvian-only. If you are reading along on a phone, the headings below are the on-site numbers, so you can match them as you go. Second, the trails between the sculptures matter as much as the sculptures themselves. There are four named trails (the Liv Trail, the Skandinieku stream path, Māra’s trail, the Krišjānis Barons trail, and the Sun trail) running through and around the hill. They are listed at the end of this piece because they are worth knowing about, and most visitors don’t.
The 26 stones, in walking order
1. Dziedādama dzimu: I Was Born Singing
“Dziedādama dzimu, dziedādama augu / Pa gadskārtu maizīte.” A daina about a girl who was born singing, raised singing, and continued singing through her life’s seasons. The first sculpture you meet on the standard route. A soft-shouldered granite stone with a small relief portrait of the hill itself carved into one face. It sets the premise: the Latvian relationship to song is not a hobby, it is a structural condition. The folk-song archive at the Latvian Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art holds something on the order of 1.34 million dainas. The work of cataloguing them is still going.
2. Šī saule, viņa saule: This World and the World Beyond
An eight-line daina about the relationship between Sun and Earth, engraved on the stone in spiral form. The viewer is meant to walk around the sculpture as they read. Indulis Ranka described his intention here as wanting visitors to be “a bit more magical and ritualistic” in their looking — not standing in front of an object but moving with it. The two-part fieldstone was sourced in Kurzeme, where the oldest layer of folk-song motifs was collected. The sculpture stands close to the former Turaida cemetery and was unveiled at the international Baltica 2000 folklore festival.
3. Neguli, saulīte, ābeļu dārzā: Sleep Not, O Sun, in the Apple Orchard
The daina addresses the Sun directly as a girl-child and tells her not to dawdle, not to sleep among the apples. The foundation stone of the sculpture is shaped like the heart of an apple. The Sun must rise before dawn so that the day can begin. This is one of the early sculptures on the hill, reinstalled in 1992 in its current position. It catches the morning light cleanly if you come up early.
4. Austras koks: The Tree of Austra
Austra’s Tree is one of the deepest cosmological images in the Latvian dainas. The world-tree, with roots in the earth and branches in the sky, around which day and night, life and death are organised. Auseklis, the Morning Star, often sits in the canopy. The sculpture renders the tree as a tall stone trunk with rays and stars, signalling the dawn breaking on a country waking up. It was unveiled on 2 July 1990, during the 20th Latvian Song and Dance Festival — the first festival in fifty years to fully restore the pre-1940 national repertoire and openly fly the Latvian flag. Three new shoots are carved into one side, “nothing at all which can stop the arrival of the light.”
5. Lībiešu putns: The Liv Bird
One of two sculptures on the hill explicitly placed for the Livs (Līvi), the Finno-Ugric people who lived along the lower Gauja and the Latvian coast for centuries before the Latvians as we know them coalesced. The bird sits ready to wake and sing. Three small symbols are carved on the natural granite at the top: a lark, a fish, a snake. The lark is the messenger; the eagle is the king of birds. The sculpture was unveiled at an international “small nations” festival of Liv-Estonian-Latvian-Finn-Hungarian folklore groups held at Turaida.
6. Jāņu akmens: The Summer Solstice Stone
The night and morning of 23–24 June — Jāņi — is the highest-stakes day on the Latvian folk calendar. Bonfires, oak-leaf wreaths, all-night singing, the search for the blooming fern. The sculpture shows two young people embraced by the Sun on Jāņi morning, the Sun giving them strength and fertility. Auseklis, the Morning Star, witnesses. The stone was placed in 1991 and sits on the side of Māra’s trail. If you visit on Midsummer eve this is the centre of the gathering on the hill.
7. Dziesmu tēvs: Father of Song
The visual centre of the hill and the place to slow down longest. The sculpture “symbolises the memory of the people, their wisdom about life, and the preservation and transfer from generation to generation of Latvian folk songs.” On one face, a respected old man who protected the songs and made up new ones — “a song for him, a song for her, for a piece of bread.” On the other face, three generations of singers stand together. A defender stands beside them, a young man with a chest that holds the dowry of songs. The area around Dziesmu tēvs is the site of folklore and ethnographic concerts every summer. Visitors are invited to sing their own folk songs here. This is also the sculpture in front of which the banned red-white-red Latvian flag was raised on 13 July 1988, during the Baltica ’88 festival, for the first time since 1940.
8. Bij’ manam kumeļam: My Steed Had…
“Bij’ manam kumeļam / Zvaigžņu sega mugurā.” “My steed had a blanket of stars on its back.” A daina that praises the horse as the farmer’s indispensable partner. Mythological horses pull the cart of the Sun across the sky. The sons of God ride out of the sea on grey horses with golden reins. Auseklis appears on a horse given by the Sun. Laima, goddess of fortune, presents a good horse to those she favours. Even the Liv chronicle of Turaida 1191 has a Horse of Destiny in it. The sculpture was unveiled in 1996 at a gathering where the assembled crowd sang horse-dainas together.
9. Bitenieka līgaviņa: The Beekeeper’s Bride
A wedding-cycle daina dedicated to the beekeeper’s bride. The bee is one of the oldest occupational layers in Latvian folk culture, and the bee-songs are some of the gentlest. The bride carries her trousseau, woven from threads of song. Beehives are placed nearby, in the spirit of the daina. The plaque also notes that since 2012 the Latvian folk-song collection — Barons’s Dainu Skapis (Cabinet of Folk Songs), 217,996 cards in the original count — has been registered on the UNESCO Memory of the World register, confirming its status as a globally significant cultural heritage object.
10. Veļu akmens: Stone of the Dear Departed
“Celieties, vēļu māmiņa, / Es pacelšu velēniņu.” The first sculpture placed on the hill, in autumn 1982, three years before the official opening. The veļi are the souls of the dear departed, who in Latvian folk belief continue their lives in a parallel world. After death the soul is met by Veļu māte, the Mother of Souls, who brings it across. Autumn is the season when the souls rise from the earth like a bank of fog and spend a little more time with their living people. The sculpture is a Latvian fieldstone whose natural texture reads as wave and mist. The film director Ansis Epners recorded the installation. He described the stone hanging from cables, swinging like a pendulum, and settling obediently into its foundation while a fall of oak leaves came down around the cameras. “The moment when the first stone prepared for Folk Song Hill nestled into its foundation, which had the design of mittens.”
11. Mātes un meitas (Grūtas domas): Mother and Daughter (Difficult Thought)
One sculpture, two names. The daina layer underneath is the genre of mother-to-daughter songs sung at every threshold of a girl’s life: birth, the spinning wheel, the eve of marriage, the moment a child of her own is laid in her arms. The piece reads as a mother lifting her child to the Sun and an Earth that is “slowly trembling” at the daughter’s leaving. The whole genre of tautasdziesmas is, in one sense, this: a transmission from one woman to the next, generation after generation, with everything important hidden inside four lines.
12. Trīs jaunas māsas: Three Young Sisters
“Trīs jaunas māsas / Sēd rožu dārzā.” Three young sisters in a rose garden. The sculpture honours the fact that the Latvian folk-song repertoire is, almost entirely, women’s work. As Garlieb Merkel observed two centuries ago: the art of Latvian song is in the hands of women, because young women are the only ones who can still feel joy under a heavy burden. Singing accompanied every task — tending livestock, threshing grain, weaving the textile that itself often carried songs woven into the pattern. The orange-and-red rock the sculpture was carved from sparkles in particular ways depending on the light: rain on it, fresh snow, summer haze, frost at the turn of the year. Folklore groups gathered here most often during the Awakening years. By common agreement it is the most sonorous spot on the hill.
13. Sapņotājs: Dreamer (paired with 15. Domātājs — Thinker)
“Ar varīti jūs kundziņi, / Ar padomu bāleliņi; / Ar varīti nevarēja, / Padomiņu pievarēt.” A song of resistance against the nobility who ruled the land. The two paired figures — a sleeper and a thinker — conjure thoughts at the same time. Folk songs in Latvia, the booklet notes, do not praise war, violence, or hatred. Hatred and fierceness cannot create anything. Life and freedom in one’s own fatherland are the values, and that fatherland is defended “with strong words and thoughts whenever that proves to be necessary. I lay my head on the moss to protect my fatherland.”
14. Spīdolas akmens: The Stone of Spīdola
Spīdola is a character from Lāčplēsis (Bearslayer), Andrejs Pumpurs’s 1888 national epic. She is the wisdom-keeper, the figure of perpetual self-renewal, often paired with the warrior Bearslayer himself. The sculpture is the one with a portrait of Krišjānis Barons carved into it, surrounded by the ornamental motifs of Spīdola’s folkloric world. The piece argues, visually, that the creative strength of folk song (Spīdola) and the work of preservation (Barons) are the same energy in two forms. It is one of the densest single sculptures on the hill in symbolic load. Sit on the bench opposite for a few minutes if there is one free.
15. Domātājs: Thinker
See entry 13 (paired with Dreamer above; they share a write-up in the museum guide and stand near each other on the hill).
16. Krasts: Beach (paired with the Ring of Linden Trees)
“Liepas zied, liepas zied / Baltajiem ziediņiem; / Sādām liepu mežu, / Apkārt mūzu pagalmiņu.” A daina celebrating stands of trees around the farm. The sculpture sits inside a planted ring of linden trees that changes through the seasons; both the sculpture and the trees are meant to be read together. The ancient daina motifs underneath — linden, oak, river, beach — are the most lyrical layer of the corpus. The form of the sculpture invites you to imagine river-rounded stones on the Vidzeme coast, “a girl sunbathing on an early summer morning,” and the line “I ran my sister through water and stone, sprinkling her with water and cleaving her with stone.”
17. Mīlestības akmens: The Stone of Love
“Dievin, tavu likumiņu, / Laimīn, tavu lemumiņu; / Sveši ar sveša satikās, / Mīļu mūžu nodzīvoja.” God’s law, Laima’s decree: two strangers met and lived a sweet life. The wedding-cycle is the most photographed part of the dainas, and the sculpture is the most photographed part of the hill. Latvian wedding parties bring their bouquets here. It is a quiet tradition, not advertised. If you visit on a Saturday in May or June you will see brides in white walking up to a granite boulder with their flowers and laying them on it before driving on to the reception. Couples also leave handwritten notes here.
18. Kupenas, ziedu kupenas: Snowdrifts / Drifts of Flowers
One of the four sculptures (with Flying Birds, First Buds, and Little Cloud) that share a daina-of-nature write-up in the museum guide: “Ai, ievu zemīte, / Tavu jaukumiņu! / Smildziņa ziedēja, / Sudraba ziediem.” A song celebrating the beauty of Latvia. The sculpture is a wave of low rounded forms, the drift of flowers reading as snowdrift in a different season. Through the hill in summer the actual flowers in the meadow underline the sculpted ones.
19. Lidojošie putni: Flying Birds
Birdsong is everywhere in the dainas. The cuckoo, the lark, the nightingale — each carries its own messages, omens, season. This sculpture renders the birds in a low cluster of forms. Look at it against the sky.
20. Pirmie ziedi: First Buds
The miraculous opening of flower buds, in the rhythm of nature. Smaller than its neighbours and easy to walk past. The whole nature-cluster (18–21) on this part of the hill is built around the principle that the natural world’s small openings — a bud, a cloud, a bird’s flight — are themselves the ground that the dainas grew from.
21. Mākonītis: Little Cloud
Piles of clouds in the field of the sky. The sculpture is rounded, almost weightless against the granite forms around it. This is also the start of the Krišjānis Barons trail — the 300-metre path that runs from the “Little Cloud” sculpture down through old oak, linden, and ash trees, past the small Dainupīte River, all the way to the “Dainas” homestead by the Gauja where Barons spent his last summer in 1922. Both the sculpture and the trail were positioned here deliberately.
22. Saules taka: Path of the Sun
“Sauli dej’ rītmiņā, / Zelta sētā vidiņā.” A song about the Sun dancing on the horizon. A three-part sculpture standing where the Sun trail crosses the Krišjānis Barons trail. Three words are engraved on the symbolic Sun pole — “Sleeping,” “Awakening,” “Dancing” — tracing the Sun’s daily arc as the dainas track it. Installed in 1994. The sculpture pairs with the trail itself: about a kilometre of forest path along the southern side of Folk Song Hill, particularly worth walking in spring when the white anemones come up.
23. Dainu kalns: Folk Song Hill
The sculpture that names the hill. It sits at the foot of the Krišjānis Barons trail, near the bank of the Gauja, far enough from the central cluster that many visitors don’t reach it. They should. Walk the trail down, sit beside this stone for a few minutes, and walk back. The whole site reads differently on the way back up than on the way down.
24. Peldētāja: Swimmer (paired with 25. Zaļā līdaka — O, Green Pike)
Latvia has 500 km of Baltic coastline and the Gauja runs through this whole reserve. Many dainas honour water. The sculpture group of Peldētāja and Zaļā līdaka reads against the Gauja itself, which you can hear from this part of the hill in summer. The Liv legend of the green pike — the fish playing in the waters of the Gauja — is the local folkloric anchor. The Latvian daina line behind the swimmer is “I wore white,” meaning purity, hard work, fair life.
25. Zaļā līdaka: O, Green Pike
See entry 24 (paired with Swimmer; the green pike is the Liv folkloric companion to the daina swimmer).
26. Krauklīša spārns: dārgumu krātuve — Raven’s Wing — Storehouse of Treasure
The closing sculpture of the catalogue, installed in 2004. Two granite parts, with a treasury vessel donated at the request of the Dalai Lama, who visited Latvia and asked that the gift be installed at Folk Song Hill. The sculpture argues that the cultural treasures of any nation must be preserved — just as the Tibetan Endless Knot carved on the stela here, and the wing of the wise raven, are signs of nation-faith and protection across cultures. Folk Song Hill, the booklet says, has been visited over the years by guests from far and wide. They learn about the Latvian dainas; they take away the same lesson that the dainas teach — that heartfelt and true relationships among peoples are possible only through harmony and mutual respect.
The four named trails (most visitors miss these)
The sculptures are the headline. The trails between and around them are the whole environment. Four are named, marked on the larger reserve map, and worth a half-hour each if you have the time.
The Liv Trail (Lībiešu taka) starts in Folk Song Hill and ends in Folk Song Garden. The route runs through what the museum identifies as Liv landscape features, with old Liv settlement traces and a Devonian-era cliff section. If you are interested in the pre-Latvian layer of this country, this is the trail to walk.
The Skandinieku stream is a small brook that members of the folklore group Skandinieki cleaned and exposed during a 1982 working bee. The water comes from a cave inside the deepest cave in the Turaida reserve and stays at about 5°C even in summer. Mosses and lichens cover the cliff floor; ferns hang from the upper edges. The brook surfaces in two places between Folk Song Hill and Folk Song Garden.
Māra’s trail runs from Folk Song Hill to Folk Song Garden by another route. The folk tradition behind it is that on the morning of 25 March, Māra’s Day, people would wash themselves in rivers, brooks, and healing wells. The custom predates Christianity in Latvia.
The Krišjānis Barons trail is the 300-metre path described under sculpture 21 (Little Cloud). It leads to the “Dainas” homestead in the Gauja valley where Barons spent his last summer in 1922. There is a small commemorative marker at the homestead. The trail itself follows what is almost certainly a route Barons walked in his time at Turaida.
The Sun trail (Saules taka) is described under sculpture 22. About 1 km along the southern side of the hill.
Iesim cauri Dainu kalnam, ne tikai apkārt.
— What I tell visitors at the entrance kiosk: “let’s go through the Hill of Dainas, not just around it.”My honest take
Most visitors to Turaida get the castle, the Rose of Turaida grave, and a brisk walk through the sculpture garden in about three and a half hours, then drive back to Riga. That itinerary will give you a perfectly fine afternoon. It will also give you about a tenth of what is actually here.
The Hill of Dainas earns the time you give it. Twenty minutes returns one impression. Two hours returns the dainas themselves, in the right order, with the trees and the river and the four named trails as the connective tissue. Three hours, on a quiet weekday, returns something else again — the long Latvian relationship to song that Indulis Ranka was carving in granite for thirty-five years. He died in April 2017 and the catalogue is closed at twenty-six. There is not going to be a twenty-seventh.
Frequently asked questions about the Dainu Kalns sculptures
Companion piece: The longer history of how the Hill of Dainas came to be built between 1980 and 1985, the role of the museum director Anna Jurkāne, the 1988 flag moment, and the Singing Revolution context is in Dainu Kalns: A Sculpture Garden Carved Under Soviet Rule. For Krišjānis Barons himself, the man whose 217,996 cards make up the source material for most of these sculptures, the standalone biography is here.
The Hill of Dainas is part of every Sigulda & Gauja Valley day we run. If you would like a half-day at Turaida with a licensed Latvian guide who walks the hill the slow way, the dainas in the right order, the trails included — we run the trip year-round at €85 per adult.
