Gūtmanis Cave

Gutman's Cave (Latvian: Gūtmaņa ala) is the widest and highest cave in the Baltic countries, located on the Gauja River in the National Park of Sigulda, Latvia. It started forming more than 10 000 years ago when meltwater eroded the sandstone rock after the Ice Age. It is the oldest tourist attraction in Latvia. On the walls of the cave are inscriptions from the 17th century. The legend of the Rose of Turaida began in this cave.

Description
Gutman's Cave is the widest and highest cave in the Baltics. It is 18.8 meters deep, 12 meters wide and 10 meters high. The cave was formed from the yellow-brown sandstone rock of the Gauja river bank; its formation is due to a millennium long interaction between the river and an underground spring.

The cave is considered the oldest tourist attraction in Latvia because visitors, from even the earliest days, have left “decorations” such as names, initials and the dates of their visits engraved on the walls of the cave. Inside the cave are coats-of-arms and the names of various barons and estate owners. These were made to order for a fee by local craftsmen who would wait for wealthy visitors near the cave armed with tools, stepladders and templates. Writing on the cave walls is no longer permitted as the site is a protected archeological and geological monument.

According to local folk legend, the waters of the spring flowing out of the cave are the tears of the wife of the Liv chief, Rindaugs. The story tells that the chief buried his unfaithful wife in the sandy bank of the Gauja river. The poor woman, distraught by her guilty conscience, cried so hard that her tears flowed out of the large cave. To this day, the spring's waters are said to have healing properties. Another tale explains how the cave got its name: a long time ago there was a good man who lived in the cave and used the spring water to heal people. Gut mann in German means "good man".

Gutman's Cave is a place of ancient worship. Until the 19th century, people would come to make their offerings to the deities. The place is also renowned for a number of enduring legends.
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Gūtmanis Cave is the biggest grotto not only in Latvia but also in Baltics. Precise measurements of the cave were first taken by Guntis Eniņš in 1972. According to his calculations, the volume of the cave is 500 m3, area of its floor is 170 m2, however, its length is 18.8 m. At its entrance the cave is 10 m high and 10.6 m wide, however, in its depth it rapidly gets narrower. Geologist Ojārs Āboltiņš believes that the formation of the cave started approximately 10,000 years ago by the lateral erosion caused by the post ice age water streams, but up to nowadays suffusion processes have been taking place – the powerful spring running from the cave continues enlarging the grotto, consequently it can be assumed that Gūtmanis cave is one of the oldest caves in Latvia.

It acquired its current looks before the present era. The cave is one of the oldest and most popular tourism sites in Latvia. Thanks to the convenient geographical location close to the main highways and several settlements (Sigulda, Turaida, Krimulda) Gūtmanis Cave has already since the 16th century or even earlier time been a popular site. This is proved by the ancient inscriptions on the walls of the cave and frequent descriptions in written sources dating back to the second half of the 18th century. It is indicative that in the descriptions of the late 18th century the name of Gūtmanis Cave is not mentioned and it is simply called the cave at Krimulda or Turaida.

The first to publish the name of the cave was natural scientist Jacob Benjamin Fisher in 1778 who wrote that “At Turaida there is a cave which consists of sandstone and is called the Good Man”. It seems that this name was taken over to the Latvian language as Gūtmaņala at the beginning of the 19th century. At the end of the 18th century the most comprehensive description of the cave was published by J. B. Fisher in the second edition of his paper “Versuch einer Naturgeschichte von Livland” and by count Ludwig August Mellin. Fisher was the first to publish the dimensions of the cave which travelled from one publication to the next one for more than a century, i.e., up to the beginning of the 20th century.

Although several authors had previously described the spring running from the cave, only in 1791 Fisher indicated that the local peasants used the water for treating diseases in belief that the water is associated with the sacrality of this place, i.e., the cave rather than the good qualities of the water. However, in 1794 Johann Christoph Brotze conceded that the peasants might have believed that some beneficial deity lived in the cave spring which might have been the origin of the cave name – the Good Man. Both Fisher and Mellin indicated that the peasants left sacrifices – coins and pieces of clothing – in the spring for using the water although according to the observations of the former author the tradition had already started to die out at the end of the 18th century.

In his description Mellin also characterized the wall inscriptions mentioning that travellers scrape their names, coats-of-arms, years and similar inscriptions in the sandstone. For the first time in the descriptions devoted to caves a reference appears here to a specific year which can be found in the ceiling of the cave and is covered with moss. It dates back to year 1564. Later the mentioning of the old inscriptions of this ad other caves became one of the traditions of tourism literature. In some travel guides of the late 19th and early 20th century even long lists of the old scrapings were published. The oldest inscription which has been partly preserved in the cave is “Anna Magdalena von Tiesenhavsen Anno 1677”. Thanks to the popularity of the cave it has been recorded in many drawings. The authors of the earliest pictures are J. C. Brotze (1794, 3 drawings), J. V. Krauze (1795), G. G. Kīzerickis (1813) and V. Z. Stavenhagen (1866).

Nowadays Gūtmanis Cave cannot be imagined without the legend about the Rose of Turaida, however the origin of the legend can be attributed to the 19th century. An interesting phenomenon characterizing all famous caves of Sigulda vicinity is the almost absolute lack of legends in connection with these caves. In the travel guides of the early 20th century a legend was published about the Livs’ chief Ridaigs or Ridaugs who had dug his unfaithful wife in a rock and her tears had turned into a spring and eroded the cave. It can be assumed that the legend is attributable to the time of national awakening when there was a particular interest in the history of the “golden age” of Latvia and the ancient pre-Christ mythology. The interest in the chiefs of the ancient tribes belongs to the movement and the legend about the Livs’ chief Ringalds appeared as a result of such processes. Still another legend has been recorded that has not been published in tourist literature. It reports about a giant carrying a stone instead of which the Gutmanis cave appeared. It is possible that from the legends previously mentioned this is the only legend traditionally connected with the cave. It has a traditional plot and the belief that the legend has existed in folklore is that this kind of texts have not been published in tourism literature.
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