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This New Year’s Eve, drink to that (from your enemy’s skull)

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Around the world, the most common drinking toast is to good health. There are, however, a few more specific ways of raising a glass:

“To good health” itself has many variants. In Slovenian, it’s na zdravje; in Spanish, salud; in Hungarian, egészségedre; and in Flemish, gezondheid.

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The Scandinavian toast skål (pronounced skoal) has a more macabre background: It originally meant “skull.”

The word is alleged to have come from a custom practiced by the warlike Vikings, who used the dried-out skulls of their enemies as drinking mugs, with the evident advantage that the vessel could hold a large quantity of mead and was easily replaceable. Politico_Spot_DavidDoran_2

The Ukrainians, however, take toasts to another level. They say budmo! That’s not just to good health for some undetermined period of time, but for eternity. As translated, it means: “Let us live forever!”

Illustrations by David Doran.


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