Books to help you find hygge
Gather friends, armfuls of candles and hygge up your home this autumn
The Little Book Of Hygge: The Danish Way To Live Well by Meik Wiking, Penguin Life
“Hygge is about atmosphere and experience, rather than things,” explains Meik Wiking. His lovely book explains how to add a sense of wellbeing to everyday life, from creating a hyggekrog – a cosy, cushioned nook to read in – to finding the most beguiling lights for your home, to savouring the small, ‘humble’ things in everyday life.
How To Hygge: The Secrets of Nordic Living by Signe Johansen, Bluebird
Signe Johansen provides “a primer to live your life to the fullest, not a bible to be slavishly followed.” There are suggestions for re-connecting with nature in the city, small adventures in the wild, lessons in self-sufficiency and ideas for making your home a candlelit refuge.
Hygge: The Danish Art of Happiness by Marie Tourell Soderberg, Michael Joseph
For actress Marie Tourell Soderberg, hygge is all about “finding happiness in the little things in life” – the sound of rain falling against a window, a hot drink from your best mug, a vase of hedgerow flowers on the kitchen table. She says, ‘“When something is hyggelig, then you are not ecstatic, wildly in love, flying high or dancing crazily. You are satisfied, comfortable, contented and glad,” and explains how to add a little hygge to your home and heart, including making secret snowdrop letters in the spring, creating a string of lights from LED bulbs and ping-pong balls, fermenting a cask of elderflower cordial and taking time to hug the special people in your world.
Hygge: A Celebration of Simple Pleasures: Living The Danish Way by Charlotte Abrahams, Trapeze
Writer Charlotte Abrahams was approaching 50 and feeling flustered. She had a busy life but the niggling feeling something was missing. Already familiar with hygge, she decided to make her research into the concept ‘a bit more personal’ and attempted to apply the philosophy of ‘self-kindness’ to her own life, ditching multi-tasking for mindfulness, making time for cake and lie-ins and cherishing the way these changes improved life.
The Book of Hygge: the Danish Art of Living Well by Louise Thomsen Brits, Ebury
You don’t need Danish recipes or the secrets of a Scandinavian lifestyle to learn how to hygge, claims this book from the people who brought us Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing
Magic of Tidying. Instead it is about recognising where you feel most at home, what puts you at ease, the rituals that anchor you and what brings comfort. The half-Danish author explores what makes up the feeling hygge embodies; belonging, comfort, wellbeing, simplicity and observance.
Scandinavian Comfort Food: Embracing The Art of Hygge by Trine Hahnemann, Quadrille
The first recipe in Trine Hahnemann’s book is the breakfast she and her husband share on the weekend, a buffet of rye bread, soft-boiled eggs, Danish cheeses, jams and fresh, hot coffee. It’s the approach that Trine takes to all the meals she serves up; seasonal, organic ingredients prepared with the minimum of fuss, but with the maximum of deliciousness. There are warming soups for a winter’s day, morels on toast, their earthy nuttiness a celebration of spring flavours and barbecued langoustines, with lemon mayo and chili cream, followed by a raspberry and redcurrant tart, ideal for a simple summer party, to be enjoyed in the great outdoors.
26 Grains by Alex Hely-Hutchinson, Square Peg
Alex Hely-Hutchinson has a thing for grains. Her recipes are based around amaranth, barley, buckwheat, oats and rye and were inspired by hygge bowl food, which ‘evokes feelings of warmth, cosiness and comfort’. So for breakfast there’s hazelnut and butter porridge – the butter melts into the warm rolled oats; lunch is slow-roast pork with spelt and pomegranate slaw, and for dinner a beef and barley stew, just the thing to come home to after a long winter walk. The added bonus is that the leftovers will keep for a good five days and the flavour will get ever richer and more luscious.