Lagom

Lagom is a Swedish word for which there is no direct translation into German . Even the Norwegian (and the two written languages Bokmål and Nynorsk ) knows the word. Only in Swiss German dialects does a word exist that can be viewed as a translation. The word "gäbig", which in German means something like "comfortable", "suitable", "handy" for objects or, in relation to people and conditions, "sociable", "pleasant", "sympathetic".

Lagom means something like “just right”, not too much and not too little, the ideal balance, middle ground, equilibrium, consensus. So lets Astrid Lindgren in her novel Emil i Lönneberga ( Emil of Maple Hills ) Emil's mother say, then asked when the father as the " köttbullar do" (meatballs) for Stationary "Lagom stora, lagom runda och lagom bruna" ( As big, round and brown as they need to be). For example, in Sweden it would usually be seen as positive if the weather is warm on vacation lagom , you can make fast progress on the lagom motorway and the portions in the lagom restaurant are large.

Allegedly, the expression goes back to the process of a drinking horn or mug walking around, which should contain just enough that everyone in the group can drink the same amount of it once - the whole team, presumably sitting around the campfire, therefore "laget om" (analogously to translate as “once for the whole team”), shortened to “lagom”.

Lagom was the earlier form of the dative in the plural of lag (law; right order), whereby no legal law had to be referred to. The current meaning has been weakened and, in addition to “according to the right order”, also has the meaning of “suitable”, “neither too little nor too much”.

literature

• Mikael Parkvall: Lagom finns bara i Sverige och andra myter om språk . Schibsted, Stockholm 2009, ISBN 978-91-7738-797-8 .