Two Words

David and I were discussing an NPR story about untranslatable words this morning, and it reminded me of two words from Norden that I hadn’t thought about for a while: the Finnish word sisu and the Swedish word lagom. They’re both reputed to be untranslatable, so you’ll pardon me for not explaining what they mean. I think Finns and Swedes also embrace these words as capturing some essence of national identity.