Timber Raftsmen of Strenči

The nearly 13,000-piece collection of glass negatives in the Strenči Photographic Workshop collection documents the faces, life stories, celebrations, and achievements of Strenči residents, as well as the secrets of their craft skills. In at least 146 of these negatives, photographer Dāvis Spunde and his students—including poet Jānis Ziemeļnieks, his brother Konrāds Krauklis, and Paulīne Kraukle—captured images of rafters and their work processes from the 1920s to the 1940s. During this period, Strenči was home to over one and a half thousand inhabitants, about a third of whom were involved in timber rafting—earning Strenči the title “capital of the Gauja rafters.” The forest and the Gauja River were two defining elements of life in Strenči.

The timber rafting in Strenči reached its peak around 1928, but then gradually declined. In 2018, the craft skills of the Gauja rafters were included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Latvia.

How did Spunde and his colleagues view these workers? Everything was precious to their photographic gaze, capturing the rafters’ work processes in all its forms. The vast landscapes along the banks of the Gauja highlight both the scale of these efforts and their aesthetic impact.

It all started with work in the forest – trees were cut down, processed and transported by horse to the banks of the Gauja River.

When the timber was delivered to the banks of the Gauja, the buyers arrived and the logs were valued and sold. This was followed by a serious period of preparation, building rafts and equipping them for living in for the next weeks.

The most important and challenging part was the rafting itself. This involved either walking along the shore or standing atop the raft, using the river’s flow to guide the logs downstream. A rafter needed to understand and feel the currents and rapids of the Gauja. “The reputation of the Strenči rafters in rafting circles surpasses even that of the famous rafters of Lejasciems and Gaujiena. There are rafters in Strenči who have guided hundreds of rafts down the Gauja without a single one touching a stone,” wrote the newspaper Tālavietis in issue 67, 1941.

The periodical specifically describes the weather conditions during the summer months of 1928, when torrential rain caused severe flooding. In June, approximately 25,000 logs became jammed at the Strenči Bridge, threatening to wash it away. The photographs from the Strenči workshop collection are not precisely dated, but the impressive log piles and locations visually align with the descriptions of the events in 1928.

Busy with their work, the rafters did not pay much attention to the photographer in their vicinity, but in their free moments – when the younger boys show their strength, a bottle with a stronger drink is passed around and the same logs are crossed in a dance step – the photographer is allowed to be present and document it all. The photographs in the Strenči glass plate collection are indisputable evidence of traditions, craft skills, events and the development of the town, but not only. Spunde and his colleagues also let us see the most important thing in the photographs – the people, the strong rafters of the Gauja River.

The exhibition was prepared by Antija Erdmane-Hermane, Head of the Museum, Džūlija Rodenkirhena, Historian.