“The trend of gifting firearms in Latvia came from the USSR, where they were given to both Chekists and Communist Party bosses from the very beginning. What is happening in Latvia is considered to be in poor taste.” Egīls Gelderiņš, head of the War Museum’s weapons department, on the recent gift-giving among officials.

Delfi.lv

In 1495, the Riga burgomaster Johann Schedding wrote in a book: “In the year 1495, on the Friday before Ash Wednesday [27 February], our merciful lord, Master Wolter von Plettenberg arrived in Riga with 450 horses and armed men. Then, on Saturday, he came to the town hall, where we all [the town councillors] paid him our respects and swore loyalty, as stipulated by the Treaty of Salaspils. [..] He presented me [the burgomaster] with a beautiful book, decorated with a sapphire; we [the councillors] presented him with three spices: sultan ginger, barkenkrutt, peppermint, and we also gifted him claret, malmsey, and Rhine wine.”

In an era of constant gift-giving for Christmas, birthdays, name days, as well as courtesy and protocol gifts, be they pistols, books, flowers, or expensive drinks, a gift can seem something mundane and ordinary. It has lost its original essence; it is no longer part of the human interaction that often carried a meaning and message that people could not express in words. A gift also connected the giver and the recipient with invisible bonds and compelled the recipient to provide a reciprocal gift; in ancient societies, a gift was like a mutual contract and an alliance, which was concluded by exchanging gifts. The French sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss, studying the role of the gift in primitive societies, wrote that in a gift, the seemingly incompatible is combined – duty and freedom, the freedom to give (without freedom there would be no gift as such) and the duty to accept the gift, as well as to respond with a gift.

A gift can be read as a story about both the giver and the recipient. What do a book decorated with a sapphire, or spices and various wines, say about the givers, and why a book or wines rather than swords or daggers? In the Middle Ages, rulers also tended to present each other with weapons as gifts, but if, for example, Plettenberg, upon arriving in Riga to receive the city’s oath of loyalty as the new Master of the Livonian Order, had gifted the Riga Council a sword, it would have been a “wrong” gift, a gift that would certainly have been misinterpreted. The coexistence of the city of Riga and the Teutonic Order could by no means be called a close friendship or mutual trust. Until the moment Plettenberg arrived in Riga with a book as a gift, the Order and the city had fought several times, as the Order wished to consolidate its supremacy over Riga; in turn, the Rigans killed all the Order’s brothers who were in the Order’s Riga Castle in 1297 and razed the old Order castle to the ground. The Rigans’ oath of loyalty to the Master is also better understood as an admission of a yoke rather than a ritual of joy and grace. A “wrong” gift could have disrupted the fragile balance of power between the Master and the city, turning peace into chaos and prosperity brought by war into poverty. Therefore, given the complexity of the previous relationship between the two sides, the book was a good gift from the Master, demonstrating both the high status of the giver—confirmed by the extremely valuable sapphire gemstone embedded in the book’s binding, which required significant capital to purchase—and also expressing respect for the councillors, educated people who would be able to not only admire the book but also read it. The symbolism contained in the councillors’ reciprocal gift to their master is easier to read, allowing us to understand what the city representatives wanted to convey by gifting spices and wine. Expensive spices, such as ginger, which was most likely brought from Asia, demonstrate the ability of the Rigans to provide unusual and exotic gifts using their extensive trade connections, and make the Master understand that there is only one trade city in his land as powerful as this—Riga. Meanwhile, gifting wine was part of the medieval protocol for city gifts, as every important guest was gifted wine; of course, the quality and origin of the wine gift depended on the importance of the guest. The French and Portuguese wines gifted to the Master by the Rigans can be considered something special, as it was rare for anyone in Livonia to drink wines that did not come from the Rhine region. The goal of gifting rare wines was to provide the Master with enjoyment and earn his favour, as well as to symbolically point to the blood of Christ, which unites rather than divides Christians.

The Master, being the lord, showed his respect and attention, and the city showed its capabilities and importance.

Choosing the right gift has always been and still is a special art, but every political gift – whether it be an expensive book or a revolver – tells a story about the giver, and not only to the recipient of the gift, but also to the tens, hundreds, and thousands of people who are witnesses to this public gift. If a gift is misinterpreted, then perhaps it was the “wrong” gift, which can lead to further misunderstandings.
Article first published in the February 2008 issue of Rīgas Laiks magazine