Tērvete

Tērvete is a village in Latvia and the administrative centre of Tērvete municipality. Famous for the historic hillfort built for the kings of the Western Zemgale in the Middle Ages.

• According to the popular legend the Semigallian king Namejs made a ring called the "namejs" so he could be identified by family. But his enemies got hold of this information and sought the ring to kill the king (during a war) to have victories. The villagers also created these rings in order to protect the king. And this the reason for the namejs being a popular ring for Latvians.
• In 1287 the Semigallian castle was destroyed by the Livonian Order of knights.
• in 1335 the wooden castle Hof zum Berge Kalnamuiža was built by the Order of Livonia near to the site of the former Semigallian fortifications, destroyed by the Lithuanian forces in 1445.

Tērvete is also where an air base, located 2 km east of Kalnamuiža. It is a minor airfield, probably used during World War II. Although it appears on American Department of Defense Operational Navigation Charts from the 1980s, the air base may have been demolished and overgrown by forest, as no trace is noted on Google Earth imagery.

Archaelogical excavations

• in 1819 K.F.Watson declared the hillfort on right bank of Tērvete river to be the site of legendary Tērvete castle described in chronicles from the Middle Ages
• the hillfort was excavated by August Bielenstein between 1866 and 1892
• the expedition of the Latvian Museum of History led by E.Brīvkalne made excavations in 1952-53 and 1954-59

External links

• about Hofcumberge (in Polish) in the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland

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