Gauja Estonians (, Leivu maarahvas or leivud; – 'Vidzeme Estonians' or leivi) were Estonians who lived along Gauja river in Latvia.
History
Gauja Estonians are most likely native to their homelands. There are mentions of
Chudes living in
Adzele county from 12th century Russian sources. There are later mentions of them living in the Gauja river area. According to August Wilhelm Hupel's book
Topographische Nachrichten von Lief und Ehstland there were about thousand Estonians in 1777. Anders Johan Sjögren claimed that there were 2,600 Gauja Estonians in 1849.
Heikki Ojansuu counted only 116 when he made a trip to an area in 1911. According to Ojansuu's theory, Gauja Estonians were refugees of the Great Northern War from Southern Estonia, but today this theory has been largely discredited. According to
Harri Moora and
Paul Ariste, Gauja Estonians were the original inhabitants of their homelands.
[Seppo Zerterberg: Viro, Historia, kansa, kulttuuri Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura 1995 (Finnish)]
Language
The last known speaker of local dialect, Anton Bok, died on April 20, 1988.
The dialect was similar to those
South Estonian, more accurately to southern Estonian subdialect of
Hargla. It had some grammatical and phonological loans from the Latvian language and possibly some from Livonian.
[Östen Dahl, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm: The Circum-Baltic Languages: Grammar and typology, Google Books]
