Elku Linden of Valdemārpils (Linden of Sacrifice)

Inside the hollow trunk of the thickest lime in the Baltic states, the wood has grown into shapes that visitors read as owls, hedgehogs, turtles and snakes. The Elku linden stands in the old Sasmaka manor park on the edge of Valdemārpils. In 2025 Talsi municipality measured it at 8.65 metres round, taken low, at 30 centimetres above the ground, with a height of 25 metres and a crown covering some 320 square metres. Its name is its oldest story. Elku means idols, or sacrifice, and tradition says this was once a tree where offerings were made. Folklore and Latvia's heritage site senvietas.lv give it 400 to 500 years. The municipality disagrees: measurements in 2023 found it growing about 3.5 centimetres a year, which works back to roughly 247 years and a planting around 1770. The two readings are far apart and nobody has settled it, so we give both. Whatever its age, it has been through a lot. A storm in 1967 took about a third of the crown, and a large limb came down in 2010. Parts of the tree are now held together with cables and cement, and the municipality reported it alive in late 2025. In 2026 it was Latvia's entry to European Tree of the Year. Come in July if you can, when the lime is in flower.