Regional Formation and Development Studies

This article examines the attitudeof young people of age 18 to 30 from Lithuania, Latvia, Finland and Norway towards the national costume. The aim of this article is to analyze and determine how national costume is appreciated by the youth of countries mentioned before. The article briefly presents the preconditions for the emergence and creation of a nationalcostume; it analyzes what kind of information is lacking about national costume. The research was made in 2017-2018. Information was provided by 156 respondents. In conclusion, the worst situation is between Finnish youth and the deepest traditions of costumeʼs wearing has Norway. The results of Lithuanians reveal that national costume is not very important tradition, Latvians show the growing interest in the costume.

The methodological approaches of determining of living standard in regions are presented in this article. Studies of living standardare complex, and in order to compare regions, multivariate statistical methods are suggested for use. Other approaches may specifyand clarify the regional features of living standard. The regional cost of living surveys in Lithuania studies are not prevalent, but themethodology can be adapted to the Lithuanian case.

In this article there are being analyzed the natural and social economic structures of Lithuanian coastal strip. The research is based on survey about the hindrances and proposed suggestions for sustainable development. There are presented authors’ results about geographic profile of Lithuania’s coastal region, degree of exploitation and processes of spatial planning, suggestions for improvement of sustainable development of coastal strip. There are distinguished the types of bad examples as institutional, projects related, shortage of financial issues, private housing and the types of good examples as legislative, institutional, projects related, NGOs related for exploitation and sustainable development of coastal strip.

In the fifth to the eighth centuries, graves of well-armed men and their riding horses –or the ritual parts of horses– were spread throughout almost the entire mainland part of Lithuania and Latvia, or in the territory between the Nemunas and Daugava / Western Dvina Rivers. This was the northernmost part of Europe in which the custom had spread in the fifth to the eighth centuries. While the horsemen’s and horses’ burial customs varied in separate regions of the defined area, still everywhere the horseman and horse were interred in one grave pit, with the horse almost always to the person’s left. In their journey to the Afterlife, however, the bond between horseman and horse began to vary in the communities that lived in the more peripheral regions. The variety of burial customs was associated with differences in the communities’ social structure; these differences affected interment traditions and formed different burial rites. The custom that existed in the Roman Period on the littorals of Lithuania and Latvia to bury ritual horse parts (the head or head and legs) and spurs with armed men disappeared; here only bridle bits symbolized the horse in armed men’s graves in the fifth to the eighth centuries. Warriors’ graves with equestrian equipment spread throughout the entire region between the Nemunas and Daugava in the fifth to eighth centuries. With the change in burial customs (with the spread of cremation), and, apparently, in worldview, riding horse burials appeared that no longer could be associated with the concrete burials of people.

Estonian and Latvian small bone spades are discussed. The majority of spades are found in hill-forts and settlement sites from the 11th to the 13th centuries. The tools and technique of manufacture are investigated.