From: celteuskara@...
Message: 9213
Date: 2001-09-08
>>That's very interesting, I had no idea luck was such a culturally specific matter. I almost pity you Danes, to have lost this feeling. My vehemently anti religious mother nevertheless is extremely superstitious, and can't understand my pointing out the paradox of this, it is indeed a very powerful metaphysical idea. You still do the wood touching, though, even thoughyou don't have quite the theoretical background for it that we do?? Imagine never having had to frantically dart across a room to touch a wooden object after a provocative boast!
>Danish lykke (and Swedish) lycka today mean only happiness. The
>meaning luck has been taken over in Danish by held (and in
>Swedish by tur, as in your turn now?). But the meaning is, what
>shall I say, much more statistical and event-oriented. You can
>be heldig in Danish, but it doesn't have the same, should I say,
>metaphysical quality as in English. Danish books on the Vikings take
>pains to explain the concept of luck (or lykke) in the Viking
>world, that it was a personal thing that followed a person, or left
>him. I've never seen it in English-writen books on that subject. To
>the Anglophonian world, it seems to me, luck is something they live
>and breathe.
>
>Torsten
>Vae victis.Email just got more fun @ another.com