Not a boundary post or a new municipal sign, but a law with a map: on 1 July 2021, the Law on Latvian Historical Lands entered into force. It assigned every Latvian parish and city to Vidzeme, Latgale, Kurzeme, Zemgale, or Sēlija, while identifying Riga separately as a historic part of Vidzeme with its own character. The Saeima adopted the law on 16 June, and it was President Egils Levits’s initiative to give legal names to cultural-historical belonging, not merely municipal borders.

The law emerged against the backdrop of administrative-territorial reform, when new municipal borders did not always match people’s sense of historical lands and cultural spaces. It provided for a development council and a plan so that public administration would also consider the needs of the Suiti, Livs, Latgalian written language, and other cultural spaces.