1 Lats Krisjanis Barons

Krišjānis Barons spent decades collecting and systematizing Latvian folk songs — dainas — ultimately assembling over 200,000 texts, a project so vast it required purpose-built wooden cabinet drawers, now preserved in Riga, to organize the slips of paper. His work is credited with anchoring Latvian cultural identity during the Russian Imperial period, when the language had no official standing. This coin was issued the year Latvia was preparing to adopt the euro, making it one of the later collector lats struck before the currency's eventual replacement in 2014.