Winter Solstice at Ethnographic Museum

We went to the Ethnographic Museum (Latvijas Etnogrāfiskais brīvdabas muzejs) to celebrate the Winter Solstice and the longer daylight growing on the way to the Summer Solstice. These seasonal changes are felt much more distinctly further north. It was an overcast day but there's an almost glowing beauty with the unspoiled snow in the woods. The lake at this open-air museum park was a snow covered frozen which made it look like a huge empty field.

Burning Yule Logs in Old Riga

Winter Solstice is the longest night of the year. Riga's sunset was 3:43PM and it rises at 9:00AM. It was snowing and 22F (-5C) but we had a great time celebrating local ancient traditions. There was the dragging of the yule log to gather last year's problems. We walked around town and through two of the Christmas Markets. Then we burned the logs and all of our problems with them. I made some videos this time which are at the bottom of this post.

Riga Christmas Markets

Christmas Markets started in Riga yesterday. We wandered around to three of them in the afternoon. It was below freezing with sunrise around 8:30am and sunset a bit before 4pm as the days get shorter. The bottom pics are in the dark but it was around 5pm. It's good to have the Christmas lights up to help brighten the afternoon.