 Her father, Fricis Arnolds Artmanis, of partial Baltic German ancestry, died in an accident aged 19, just four months before she was born.Her mother Anna Regīna Zaborska, of Polish heritage, survived as a single mother by doing seasonal agricultural jobs.As a young girl, Artmane grew up playing in the fields; she was fond of wild flowers and learned to make flower arrangements and dolls in the Latvian traditional style.