Arvi wrote:
Hukk = perishing/death
Hukkama = put to death/execute
That is intersting. We have those words too, with not exactly same meanigs, but anyway 'negative' meanings. Also 'hukka' means wolf to us Finns. But we too have many more abstract words which are propably derivatives from 'hukka':
hukkua-verb -> to be
drowned, to be lost.
Hukata-> to lose things, what ever things, even 'the whole life'.. Old words, root words, are interesting, their meaning are always concrete.
Hukka, susi, wolf, was understood as a way as a concrete threat for people and their animals, even death.
Really - was it??
I think it was not just the wolves themselves which were experienced as dangerous. The real danger has been the
'forest' (for us Finns at least..). A forest was full of dangersfor life, to get lost, to perish..
the forest, a dense labyrinth, like an 'other world' without clear limits, there were no compasses, forests were hudreds of kilometres wide and no human made paths, a scaring and unknown area, where the real enemies, some other humans, could hide in concrete.
I think the wolves were labeled to represent all the dangers of forests. There are not many real stories of the evil, cruelty or violence of wolves, - many of them are legends and mythes...To kill an other animal by a wolf is not 'cruelty'. A bear could be a dangerous and scaring animal too, but it was not hated like the wolf was. All other way round. A bear was worshipped before hunting, and again after it was killed. Legends and mythes of bears are not 'bad'. Why?.. There is something 'human-like' in wolves, isn't it?..In their nightly voices, their cleverness, how they co-operate.. etc..
uups..what a writing by me...(well I just thought aloud, what just jumped into my mind and what I happened to remember..)..