Aizkraukle

Aizkraukle lies on the Daugava River in Vidzeme, at a boundary between the historical regions of Vidzeme and Selonia. A high bank and nearby tributary stream offered a defensible place beside the great river route linking the Baltic interior with Livonian trading centres. Forests, fields and fisheries supplied the surrounding settlements, while the Daugava carried goods, armies and news across the region.

The Livonian Chronicle first mentions the Liv hillfort at Aizkraukle in 1204, when Livs and Lithuanians attacked Riga. It was then described as the easternmost Liv port on the Daugava, beyond which lay the lands of the baptized Selonians and Latgalians around Koknese and Jersika. The people of Aizkraukle were forcibly baptized in 1205. Burials in two nearby cemeteries contain around one hundred Liv and Latgalian graves from the tenth to twelfth centuries.

In the second half of the fourteenth century, the Livonian Order built a stone castle several kilometres downstream from the old hillfort. Known in German as Ascheraden, it guarded the river crossing and the road into Livonia. The older harbour and the newer fortress together show how the same Daugava corridor supported both local Liv settlement and the military order of the medieval Baltic frontier.