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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in Laima

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
My favorite of dainas that mention Laima.

This, dear Wyrd, is what you've given me:
firm tits,
a long neck,
and a pug nose.
It's all mine.
Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
You'll Never Outrun Wyrd

In the corpus of Latvian dainas—folksongs—no goddess is mentioned more often than Laima: Fate, Moira, Wyrd. Everyone acknowledges that she's the most powerful of them all. In some dainas she's said to be more powerful even than Dievs (Heaven/God) himself, but in the poems nonetheless she's generally addressed in the most intimate and personal terms: “my Laima,” “my dear Laima,” “dearest Laima,” the folksongs say. Euphemism perhaps, but what is closer than one's own wyrd?

Robert Cochrane once wrote that the true Goddess of Witches is Fate. In the raksti, the traditional symbol-motifs of Latvian folk art, Laima's symbol is the broom. In the end, she sweeps everything before her.

When translating dainas, I always aim for a poem that sounds as if it could have been written originally in English; hence my choice of “Wyrd” over “Laima” or “Fate”: translating one heathenry with another.

Last modified on

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