Heathenry Quotes

Quotes tagged as "heathenry" Showing 1-30 of 38
Galina Krasskova
“Rite To Ancestors:

Hail to those who have passed through the veil
From Life to Death, to Earth from Breath.
Hail to those who suffered to gift me with blood,
Hail to those who survived to gift me with body,
Hail to those whose songs gift me with inspiration.
Hail to those whom I knew and loved in life,
Whose memory I carry with me like a word of comfort,
Hail to those who left this land long ago,
Whose names I honor like a word of hope,
Or if I know not their names, whose lives I honor still.
I live and love because you lived and loved,
I speak and struggle because you spoke and struggled,
You live in me, as I will live in those who come after me.
Grant me the patience, O my beloved Dead,
To see the long view, and remember that what I do
Affects a million million souls I will never know.”
Galina Krasskova, Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner: A Book of Prayer, Devotional Practice, and the Nine Worlds of Spirit

Galina Krasskova
“Rite To Tyr:

Hail to the One-Handed God!
Hail to Him whose name is Honor
And whose Word is iron,
Who alone never shirks the thankless task
Whose reason is Lawful Necessity.
Hail to the Lord of Swords,
Who gave a weapon-bearing hand
To see that what must be done was done in truth.
Hail God of the sunset, last single ray of light,
Lord of loyal morality, whose name none takes in vain.
Now must I face loss to do what is right,
O Lord Tyr, and I do not ask for your aid
To take away that loss, that I might hope for ease of action.
As you stood forth knowing you must lose to win,
So I ask only that you keep my back straight,
My arm strong, my hand from trembling,
My voice from faltering, my words from vanishing,
My head up, and my resolve unyielding
As I reach into the challenging maw of my own future.”
Galina Krasskova, Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner: A Book of Prayer, Devotional Practice, and the Nine Worlds of Spirit

Carolyne Larrington
“It is probable, as Anthony Faulkes suggests, that the pagan religion was never systematically understood by those who practiced it. Different areas of Scandinavia worshipped different gods at different times in the pre-Christian era; the localized nature of cults and rituals produced neither dogma nor sacred texts, as far as we know. Rather pre-Christian religion was 'a disorganized body of conflicting traditions that was probably never reduced in heathen times to a consistent orthodoxy such as Snorri attempts to present'.”
Carolyne Larrington, The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

“The male sphere of Norse shamanism consisted of the elite warrior groups known as the berserkir ("bear-shirts") and the úlfheðnar ("wolf-skins"). The berserkers (as we'll refer to the members of both of those groups for the sake of convenience), were shamans of a very different sort. After undergoing a period of rigorous training and initiation, they developed the ability to fight in an ecstatic trance that rendered them fearless - and, according to some sources, impervious to danger - while nevertheless inspiring a tremendous amount of fear in their opponents by their behavior, which was
at once animalistic and otherworldly. Perhaps needless to say, there was no ergi associated with being a berserker. Quite the opposite, in fact - the berserker was seen as something of a model of manliness.”
Daniel McCoy, The Viking Spirit: An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion

“It was highly fatalistic, but its fatalism was not one of complacency. It saw life as being ultimately doomed to tragedy, but with the opportunity for grand and noble heroism along the way. The Vikings sought to seize that opportunity, to accomplish as much as they could - and be remembered for it - despite the certainty of the grave and "the wolf." How one met one's fate, whatever that fate happened to be, was what separated honorable and worthy people from the dishonorable and the unworthy. Norse religion and mythology were thoroughly infused with this view. The gods, the "pillars" who held the cosmos together, fought for themselves and their world tirelessly and unflinchingly, even though they knew that in the end the struggle was hopeless, and that the forces Of chaos and entropy would prevail. They went out not with a whimper, but with a bang. This attitude is what made the Vikings the Vikings.”
Daniel McCoy, The Viking Spirit: An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Luck sets its stamp upon a man outwardly. Whence had the Northmen their
keenness of vision, which enabled them to apprize a man at a glance? At the
first meeting they would say either: he is a man promising luck and
honour (sæmligir and hamingjusamligr), one luck is to be expected
of(giptuvænligr), or: he bears the mark of unluck (úgiptubragð). Partly on the
strength of intuition, as we say — or, as the ancients put it, because the mind of
the beholder told him what to think of the stranger, — but partly on external
criteria; luck manifested itself openly in the newcomer's mien, gait, behaviour,
bearing, and not least in his well-nourished appearance, his health, his dress,
and his weapons. Only a family of wealth and speed is able to send its
youngling out in many-coloured clothes and with a splendid axe, an “heirloom”
of a weapon.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Frith is the state of things which exists between friends. And it means, first and foremost, reciprocal inviolability. However individual wills may clash in a conflict of kin against kin, however stubbornly individual heads may seek their own way according to their quota of wisdom, there can never be question of conflict save in the sense of thoughts and feelings working their way toward an equipoise in unity. We need have no doubt but that good kinsmen could disagree with fervour, but however the matter might stand, there could — should, must inevitably - be but one ending to it all; a settlement peaceable and making for peace — frith.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

“Then spoke Gangleri: 'If norns determine the fates of men, they allot terribly unfairly, when some have a good and prosperous life, and some have little success or glory, some a long life, some short.'
High said: 'Good norns, ones of noble parentage, shape good lives, but as for those people that become the victims of misfortune, it is evil norns that are responsible.”
Anthony Faulkes, Edda: Skaldskaparmal (Set of 2 Copies)

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Words were dangerous. They could bite through luck and fix themselves in a man. They were not to be likened to sharp arrows which wounded, but might then be drawn out and flung to the ground. For they had life in them, they would creep about inside the victim, hollowing him out till there was no strength left in him, or they would change him and mould him according to their own nature.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Claude Lecouteux
“We are better informed about Valholl than we are about Hel, undoubtedly because people preferred to envision heaven rather than hell. Valholl was a large, easily recognized hall. The rafters of the building were made of spears, it was covered with shields, and coats of mail were strewn across the benches. A wolf was hanging west of the doors, an eagle soared above the building, and the goat Heidrun, from whose udder flowed mead, could be spotted atop the roof. Odin did not live there. He resided in the Hall of the Slain (Valaskjalf) or the Sunken Halls (Sokkvabekk),* where he drank with Saga, a hypostasis of the goddess Frigg.”
Claude Lecouteux, The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors, and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind

“Another example of the same attitude, this time on a less cosmic and more humble scale, comes from the life of the warrior-poet Egil Skallagrimsson. According to his saga, toward the end of his life, one of his sons died, after the others had died before him. Such was the depth of Egil's grief that he planned to kill himself, but his surviving daughter convinced him instead to use his poetic talent to compose a memorial poem for his lost children. Egil's poem is called The Wreck Of Sons (Sonatorrek). In it, Egil bemoans his lot in life and curses Odin, his patron god, for having made him suffer so much. But Egil finds that this suffering has also carried a gift within it, for his anguish inspires him to compose better poetry than ever before. He lets loose an eloquent cry of both despair and joy, or at least contented acceptance. The final three stanzas read:

I offer nothing
With an eager heart
To the greatest of gods,
The willful Odin.
But I must concede
That the friend of the wise
Has paid me well
For all my wounds.

The battle-tested
Foe of the wolf
Has given me
A towering art,
And wits to discern
In those around me
Who wishes well,
Who wishes ill.

Times are dire,
Yet glad is my heart,
Full of courage,
Without complaint.
I wait for the goddess
Of dirt and of death
Who stands on the headland
To bear me away.”
Daniel McCoy, The Viking Spirit: An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion

Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson
“Mér sé goð holl ef ek satt segi, gröm ef ek lyg." (May the gods be favorable if I tell the truth, offended if I lie).”
Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson, A Piece of Horse Liver: Myth, Ritual and Folklore in Old Icelandic Sources

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Instead of insisting that no quarrel shall be suffered to arise between one brother and another, they would simply acknowledge that no such quarrel ever could by any possibility arise. In other words, instead of a prohibition, we should have the recognition of an impossibility. The characters in the Icelandic sagas are in this position still —though we may feel that the cohesion of the clan is on the point of weakening. They have still, more or less unimpaired, the involuntary respect for all such interests as may affect the clan as a whole; an extreme of caution and foresight in regard to all such enterprise as cannot with certainty be regarded as unaffecting the interest of all its members.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Honour at once brings up the thought of vengeance. It must be so; he who thinks of honour must say vengeance, not only because the two are always found together in the stories, but more because it is only through vengeance that we can see the depth and breadth of honour. Vengeance contains the illumination and the explanation of life; life as it is seen in the avenger is life at its truest and most beautiful, life in its innermost nature.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“In this ideal of justice the apparent conflict between the theories of law and the practice of everyday life is accounted for. The Teutons had a strong inclination for peaceable settlement of disputes, but mediation stood outside trying to effect a reconciliation by mutual agreement without in the least prejudicing the right of frith. Later law reflects an original Teutonic sense of justice insofar as it works up two separate tendencies into one system. The lawyers of the transition age tried to make mediation an integral part of the judicial proceedings and thus tend towards a legal system built up on the weighing and valuation of the offence at the same time as they worked for the abolishing of the ancient right of private revenge. By this harmonising process, Teutonic jurisprudence was gradually led into correspondence with Roman law, but it was slow in abandoning the idea of absolute reparation as the paramount condition of right and justice.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Padraic Colum
“There sat Iduna in the golden house that opened on her garden, Had she been in the world of men, every one who saw her would have remembered their own innocence, seeing one who was so fair and good. She had eyes blue as the blue sky, and she smiled as if she were remembering lovely things she had seen or heard. The basket of shining apples was beside her.
To each God and Goddess Iduna gave a shining apple. Each one ate the apple given, rejoicing to think that they would never become a day older. Then Odin, the Father of the Gods, said the runes that were always said in praise of Iduna, and the Dwellers in Asgard went out of Iduna's garden, each one going to his or her own shining house.”
Padraic Colum

Vilhelm Grønbech
“But words can of course equally well carry a blessing with them. A good word at parting is a gift of strength to the traveller. When the king said “Good luck go with you, my friend,” the man set out carrying a piece of the king's power in him. “Luck on your way to your journey's end, and then I will take my luck again,” is a saying still current among the Danish peasantry. A good word given on coming to a new place meant a real addition to one's luck. When Olaf the Peacock
moved into his new homestead, old Hoskuld, his father, stood outside uttering words of good luck; he bade Olaf welcome with luck, and added significantly: “This my mind tells me surely, that his name shall live long.” Orðheill, word-luck, is the Icelandic term for a wish thus charged with power, either for good or evil, according as the speaker put his goodwill into his words and made them a
blessing, or inspired them with his hate, so that they acted as a curse. There was man's life in words, just as well as in plans, in counsel. Thoughts and words are simply detached portions of the human soul and thus in full earnest to be regarded as living things.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“The sentence, that kinskip is identical with humanity, which at first sight seemed a helpful metaphor, has now revealed itself as nothing but the literal truth. All that we find in a human being bears the stamp of kinship. In mere externals, a man can find no place in the world save as a kinsman, as member of some family — only the nidings are free and solitary beings. And the very innermost core of a man, his conscience, his moral judgement, as well as his wisdom and prudence, his talents and will, have a certain family stamp. As soon as the man steps out of the frith and dissociates himself from the circle into which he was born, he has no morality, neither any consciousness of right, nor any guidance for his thoughts. Outside the family, or in the intervals between families, all is empty. Luck, or as we perhaps might say, vitality, is not a form of energy evenly distributed; it is associated with certain centres, and fills existence as emanations from these vital points, the families.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“The power to live comes from within, pouring out from a central spring in the little circle, and thence absorbing the world. In order to fill his place as a man, the Germanic individual must first of all be a kinsman. The morality, sense of right and sense of law that holds him in his place as member of a state
community, as one of a band of warriors, or of a religious society, is dependent upon his feelings as a kinsman; the greater his clannishness, the firmer will be his feeling of community, for his loyalty cannot be other than the sense of frith applied to a wider circle.”
Vilhelm Grønbech

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Clan-feeling is the base of all spiritual life, and the sole means of getting into touch with a larger world. The same power which makes the Germanic individual a kinsman prevents him from becoming a limited family being and
nothing more. The strength and depth of frith and honour mould the clans together in alliances, and call larger communities into existence. The thing community for judging and mediating, and the kingdom or state for common undertakings, are institutions necessitated by the nature of luck. He who has felt the strength and depth of these men's frith and honour will not be in danger of misjudging the family in his historical view; but then again, he will not be tempted to set it up as the unit in existence, as the secret that explains everything in the society and the life of our forefathers.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

“It needs something more than imagination and something more than constructive power to place Middle-garth and Utgard in their due relation one to the other. Re-experience is needed. We have to build up the world anew,
without regard to all we have learned, irrespective of atlas and topography. With
us, the world is formed by setting observations in their place according to
measuring tape and compass, but if we are to build up Middle-garth and Utgard as well, then we must take experiences as a weight — and bear in mind withal, that no scales and standard weights can here avail; all must be weighed in the hand. Experiences are too many and various to be expressed in numbers and measurements at all. They consist not only of the impressions produced by the
external eye, but have also an inner reality. When we learn that the ancients imagined the limit of the world as situate close outside their village, we are apt to conceive their horizon as narrowed accordingly; but the decisive point in their view of the world lies rather in the fact that the contents of their horizon was far deeper than we think. How large is the village? Meeting the question in words of our own, but as near to the thoughts of the ancients themselves as may be, the answer must run; It houses ourselves, it is filled with honour, with luck, with fruitfulness — and this is equal to saying, that it is the world. Yes, the village is Middle-garth itself.”
Vilhelm Grønbechønbech

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Primitive ideas about life and existence are neither congruous with our concepts nor diametrically opposed to our science and psychology. The belief in souls does not include personification of natural objects, but on the other hand it does not exclude the possibility that Sun and Earth may assume a human-like appearance. In Scandinavia, nature is peopled by powers in human shape. Up from the earth and out from the hills elf and dwarf peer forth, a host of giants bellow from the mountains, from the sea answer Ran's daughters, those enticing and hardhearted wave-maidens, with their cruel mother, and at home in the hall of the deep sits venerable Ægir. Over the heavens go sun and moon; some indeed declare that the two drive in chariots with steeds harnessed to
their carts; the sun is chased by two wolves eager to swallow its shining body. Of the sun and the moon it is said, both that they were given and taken in marriage, and that they have left offspring.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“When earth is called the wife of Odin, the mother of Thor, when wind is styled the son of Fornjót and the sea is conceived as Ran, the wife of Ægir, the myths are not anthropomorphism or personification in the modern and Alexandrian sense. Human-likeness is joined to the other qualities of natural phenomena or, more truly expressed, human appearance enters as a quality among other qualities into the soul of earth, wind and sea, but it does not in the least interfere with the impersonal workings of the forces of nature. There is no contradiction between subject and verb in the scald's description of the winter gales: “Fornjót's Sons began to whirl,” nor is there really any breach of common-sense in a storm scene such as this: “The gusts carded and twined the storm-glad daughters of Ægir.” The moon gives birth, the earth is a mother, stones bring young into the world, and that is to say that these beings beget, conceive and are delivered, for thus all procreation takes place under the sun. But this does not imply that earth must transform itself to a human being and seek a couch to bring forth its children. The little we know as to our forefathers' practical relations with the world about them indicates, as will soon appear, that they did not appeal to the objects of nature as pseudo-personalities; like their primitive brethren all over the world, they tried to win the friendship and power of animals and trees and stones by much surer means. When the poet lets Frigg send messengers about to fire and water, iron and all kinds of ore, to stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts, birds, to get them to swear they will never harm Balder, he has plainly no idea in his mind of such messengers going out to knock at the doors of nymphs and demons; his hearers must have been familiar with a method of appealing directly to the things themselves, to the souls.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“By virtue of his dominance over nature, man can also combine souls, and engraft the essence of one upon another. Thus he inspires that which his hands have worked on, and equips his implements with qualities calculated to render them useful in their calling. When be fastens a bunch of feathers to his arrow, he gives its flight the accuracy of a bird, perhaps also something of a bird's
force in swooping on its prey; as surely as he gives himself a touch of birdnature by fastening feathers about his body. Or he may, in the strength of his artistic faculty, content himself with a presentment of nature. He chisels a serpent on his sword, lays “a blood-painted worm along the edge” so that it
“winds its tail about the neck of the sword”, and then lets the sword “bite”. Or be
may use another form of art, he can “sing” a certain nature into his weapon. He tempers it in the fire, forges it with art and craft, whets it, ornaments it, and “lays on it the word” that it shall be a serpent to bite, a fire to eat its way. So also he builds his ship with the experience of a shipbuilder, paints it, sets perhaps a beast at the prow, and commands that it shall tread sure-footed as a horse upon
the water. Naturally, the mere words are not enough, if there is no luck in them; they take effect only if the speaker can make them whole. How he contrives to accomplish this is a question too deep to enter into here, but as we learn to know him, we may perhaps seize upon one little secret after another.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“Through innumerable kinships, natures are knit together this way and that, until the world hangs in a web of frith. So man draws souls into his circle. For the present age, the war-cry is: rule. Be master of the earth, subdue creation is the watch-word running through our time, and it looks as if this commandment sympathetically strikes the heart-note of our culture and ever sets the pace not only for its actions but also for its speculations. All hypotheses anent past ages
in the history of our race hinge on the assumption that man has made his way
through an everlasting battle, and that civilization is the outcome of man's
struggle for existence. But modern civilization with its cry for mastery and its
view of life as a continuous strife is too narrow a base for hypotheses to make
history intelligible. The evolutionary theory of an all-embracing struggle for food and survival is only an ætiological myth, as the ethnologists have it, a simple contrivance to explain modern European civilization by throwing our history, its competition and its exclusive interest in material progress back on the screen of the past. When ancient and primitive cultures are presented in the light of
modern economical problems, all the proportions and perspectives are
disturbed; some aspects are thrown into relief, other aspects are pushed into
the shade, without regard to the harmony inherent in the moral and intellectual
life of other peoples; and the view as a whole is far more falsified by such capricious playing of searchlights than by any wilful distorting of facts.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“In the legendary shape which the myths took on when they were reduced to stories by the philosophy of a new religion, it would seem as if the fateful trial of strength took place between gods and giants, while the dwellers on earth were left to look on with bated breath. The poet gives his narrative in the past form as if it were something over and done with; from the form of the words it might seem as if the listeners enjoyed an enhanced sense of security by calling up the
memory of a moment when the fate of the world hung in the balance and then swung over to the proper side. But the literary form which the myths acquired in the hands of the poets during the Viking age and later obscures the actual meaning that was plain to the listeners, when the legends were recited at the feast and illustrated, or rather supplemented, by rites and ceremonial observances. The fight is waged from day to day in the midst of the human world, no one is sure of keeping the light and the warmth, unless he and his fellows by some ceremony or other are ever strengthening the bond between themselves and the high-faring lights. If the alliance fail but for a moment, then the heavenly bodies will lose their way, and then sets in the state which the poet of the Voluspá still knew, and could describe.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“In our conception of men and animals we fasten on the outward bodily coherence and continuity, thus creating a mass of isolated individuals where primitive man sees manifestations of grand souls or ideas. In our world, the reality of man is determined by the circumscribed and isolated status of his body, and his soul is made up of the thoughts and feelings confined to his isolated brain. The solitariness of the human being is so strong in our culture and so prominent in our experience that we slur over all other facts, such as the spiritual influence of his presence, the power of his words and the inevitable concatenation of fate between individuals that makes a family, and often a still larger body of men, suffer for the imprudence and guilt of one sinner. To us, the
individual is the reality on the basis of which all practical and theoretical questions must be solved, and we look upon all the other facts as secondary, prepared to grapple with them as problems, and we go on tackling them, piling one solution upon the top of another, even when they prove insoluble. On the other hand, primitive culture gathers the whole mass of facts into the reality called man, and constructs a “soul” in which the power of words and spiritual emanation, the “suggestive” force and the touch of hands are included as well as form and features, in which the solidarity of the many is recognised as well as the responsibility of the individual.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“The soul is called hugr, Anglo-Saxon hygi, thereby indicating it as desire and inclination, as courage and thought. It inspires a man's behaviour, his actions and his speech are characterised according to whether they proceed out of whole hugr, bold hugr, or downcast hugr. It resides in him and urges him on; thus ends Loki when he has said his say among the gods: “Now I have spoken that which my hugr urged me to say,” thus also Sigurd when he has slain the serpent: “My hugr urged me to it.” It sits within, giving counsel or warning; “my hugr tells me,” is a weighty argument, for when the hugr has told a thing, the matter is pretty well settled. “He seems to me unreliable, you will see he will soon turn the evil side outward; it is against my will that he is with you, for my hugr tells me evil about him,” thus Ingolf exhorts his brother to turn away a vagabond who comes to the place. A winter passed, and Ingolf could say that all had fallen out as his hugr had warned him. And Atli Hasteinson, of noble race, confidently gives directions to his household after the fight with Hrafn: “You, my son, will avenge your father, if you take after your kin, and my hugr tells me you will become a famous man, and your children after you.” And when the hugr is uneasy, as when one can say with Gudrun: “Long I hesitated, long were my hugrs divided in me,” then life is not healthy. But when a man has followed the good counsel from within, and attained his end, then there rises from his soul a shout of triumph, it is his hugr laughing in his breast.— Now and again, the soul has its knowledge directly, as we should say; at times it has acquired it by spying out the land, and then it may chance that the enemy has seen his opponent's hugr coming towards him, whether in human form or in the shape of a beast. He dreams of wolves, and is told that it is the hugrs of men he has
seen.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“The authority in such a clan-society is of a peculiar sort, it is here, it is there, it is
everywhere, and it never sleeps. But there is no absolutely dominant power. The circle may perhaps have its leader in chief, but he cannot force anyone to his will. In Iceland, this lack of subordination appears in the crudest light. Iceland had men who gladly paid out of their own purse for the extravagances of their restless kinsmen, if only they could maintain peace and prevent futile bloodshed; but their peacemaking was an everlasting patchwork. There was no
power over those who did not seek the right. To take firm action against them was a thing even the most resolute of their kin could never do, for it was out of the question for the clan to disown its unruly members and leave them to the mercy of their enemies. When Chrodin, a man of noble stock, was chosen, for his cleverness and god-fearing ways, to be majordomo in Austria, he declined with these significant words: “I cannot bring about peace in Austria, chiefly
because all the great men in the country are my kinsmen. I cannot overawe them and cannot have any one executed. Nay, because of their very kinship they will rise up and act in defiance.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

Vilhelm Grønbech
“In the Germanic idea, the moral estimate is always ready to rise to the surface; in fact, for the expression of goodness, piety, and uprightness, the Teutons have no better words than lucky (Anglo-Saxon sœlig, Gothic séls, and similar terms), which embrace the idea of wealth and health, happiness and wisdom.”
Vilhelm Grønbech, The Culture of the Teutons: Volumes 1 and 2

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