Paper chain: thousands of Latvians unite to move books to new national library

On Saturday, Riga held the mass event to celebrate its year as a European Capital for Culture

Children pass books from one to another at an event in Riga on Saturday Photo: REUTERS

By George Berridge

The Telegraph -  21 Jan 2014

On Saturday, thousands of Latvians marked the start of Riga's tenure as one of two European Capitals of Culture by forming a human chain and moving 2,000 books by hand to the new national library building.

Around 15,000 people braved freezing temperatures – as low as -14C – to form a chain stretching more than a mile across the capital, deliberately echoing 1989's Baltic Way when some two million protesters formed a human chain across Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to fight for independence from the Soviet Union.

Organiser Aiva Rozenberga said the event had deep symbolic significance for Latvians.

“The people who stood in the Baltic Way remember that feeling of being shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers," she told AFP.

"The people taking part in the book chain who are prepared to stand here on a cold winter day are taking this seriously too – we are literally standing up for culture."
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