Last summer, the Saeima passed the Law on Latvian Historical Lands. This was the response initiated by State President Egils Levits to the rushed municipal reform. The map attached to the law marks out Sēlija, and includes Malēnija, Piebalga, the Livonian Coast, and the Suiti region. Jānis Turlajs, editor-in-chief of the cartography publishing house Jāņa sēta, explains that when creating the map, specialists returned to the Latvia of 800–1000 years ago: "We looked back to the 13th century to see the areas inhabited by these ancestors of Latvians, the Baltic and Finnic tribes."

Determining the border between Kurzeme and Zemgale was the greatest challenge, as it never clearly existed in reality. "We change these borders as it suits our economic convenience. We see that absolute nonsense has taken place. On the right bank of the Daugava, maps of the Zemgale planning region appeared with tourist slogans saying 'Welcome to Zemgale!'. We see this in Koknese or Vietalva, or even worse, somewhere completely far from Zemgale, and this is a real distortion of our history and cultural history," admits Jānis Turlajs. The cartographer is convinced that it was necessary to draw the borders of the historical lands on the map, which should not be confused with day-to-day economic management regulated by administrative divisions.