Although the tree rings of living spruce trees were explored in Lithuania as early as the 1970s, the dating of spruce timber was impossible for a long time because the long-term spruce chronologies did not exist in Lithuania and the Baltic region. However, the spruce timber collected in the Soviet times was preserved in our collection and made available for the study. It is worth mentioning that spruce timber predominates among old houses in western Lithuania, where spruce forests predominate nowadays. In addition, spruce timber was found in the construction of several churches in central Lithuania and Kaunas City Hall. Unfortunately, spruce timber is almost absent in eastern Lithuania, which does not allow the construction of a centennial chronology for this region. In addition, spruce timber is not common among archaeological timber, and only several samples from Kaunas Castle and Klaipėda oldtown were obtained.
The first attempts to date spruce timber were made in the 2000s. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful because chronologies produced from living trees were too short, and a gap existed with the tree-ring series of architectonical timber. However, a much longer chronology from Białowieża Forest provided by Dr M. Koprowski made it possible to bridge the living trees with architectonical timber, to date still undated material and compile a centennial chronology for Norway spruce in Lithuania spanning from 1480 to 2017.