Velna laiva
The Velna laiva ( German devil boats ) Kurland (Lat. Kurzeme) are ship settlements from the Bronze Age (950–750 BC) in the northern part of Latvia .
Boat burials were common in Sweden (mainly on Gotland Island ), Denmark , Finland , northern Germany , Norway, and western Estonia from the Bronze Age to the Viking Age . The stone ships were only associated with the devil after the Christianization of the Latvians.
The "devil boats" of Courland consist of large, upright granite stones that accentuate the ends of the ship with extra large stones. The boats are 9 to 15 meters long and 2.5 to 4.5 meters wide. In the middle of the boat are urns in which burnt bones lie in pits, sometimes in small stone boxes made of flat stones. A "devil boat" can have 4 to 12 burials. The internal structure of the boat graves was almost identical. The grave is under a large stone slab. Two or more stone boxes underneath contain earthenware vessels, ashes and corpses.
In Latvia there were in the communities Talsi (German: Talsen , Liv : TALSA ) and Kuldīga ( German Goldingen ) eight stone ships. Today only the stone boats from Birznieki and Bīlava are preserved. The Bīlavu stone ship is located near Pürciems about 300 m northwest of Bīlavu House. The last archaeological excavation was carried out in 1999 by Andrei Vasks. To the northeast of Valdemārpils , on the edge of a forest, lies the Birznieki stone ship.
The first excavations were carried out in 1863 by Julius Döring (1818–1898), a Baltic German painter and antiquarian, near the Bīlavu house. He uncovered two north-west-south-east oriented ship settlements. The excavation found 10 to 12 thin slabs of stone stacked on three levels. They were filled with sand mixed with burned human bones, charcoal and broken glass. In 1999 the boat was renovated and declared a cultural monument of national importance. The devil's boat was well preserved, 14.5 m long and 3.05 m wide. During the excavation, shell fragments and burned human bones, as well as an entire pot of clay, were found.