MAKE ROOM FOR HYGGE HORDES
As soothing as a video of a basket of baby sloths, and borne on a raft of lifestyle books, hygge is headed for your living room. Hygge (pronounced HOO-gah, like a football cheer in a Scandinavian accent) is the Danish word for cozy. It is also a national manifesto, nay, an obsession expressed in the constant pursuit of homespun pleasures involving candlelight, fires, fuzzy knitted socks, porridge, coffee, cake and other people. But no strangers, as the Danes, apparently, are rather shy. Hygge is already such a thing in Britain that the Collins Dictionary proclaimed it one of the top 10 words of 2016.
Denmark frequently tops lists of the happiest countries in the world, in surveys conducted by the United Nations, among other organisations, consistently beating its Scandinavian cousins, Sweden and Norway — as well as the United States, which hovers around 13th place. While all three Nordic countries share happiness boosters like small populations and the attendant boons of a welfare state, what distinguishes Denmark is its quest for hygge.
At least, that is the conclusion of Meik Wiking, the founder and chief executive of the Happiness Institute, a think tank based in Copenhagen dedicated to exploring why some societies are happier than others.
“We talk about it constantly,” Wiking said. “I’ll invite you over for dinner and during the week we’ll talk about how hyggelig it’s going to be, and then during the dinner we’ll talk about hyggelig it is, and then during the week afterwards, you’ll remind me about how hyggelig Saturday was.” (The adjectival form of the word is pronounced HOO-gah-lee.)
When we spoke, Wiking — pronounced Viking — was home in Copenhagen for a few days after a multi-city tour. He has written The Little Book of Hygge, which is already a best-seller in Britain and will be out next month in the United States. It is the most engaging of what is becoming a full-fledged lifestyle category. More than 20 how-to hygge books were published here in 2016.
Also coming stateside in January is How to Hygge: The Nordic Secrets to a Happy Life, by Signe Johansen, a chef and food writer, to be followed in February by The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Contentment, Comfort and Connection, by Louisa Thomsen Brits, who is half-Danish and half-British and who sells Danish furniture from www.hygge.com.
Wiking is the only author to include a bacon metric in his hygge dissertation, which is embedded with charts, surveys, statistics, recipes and craft projects. Noting that candles (unscented) are a vital hygge accessory, he reports that Danes burn 13 pounds of candle wax a person a year, doing so even in classrooms and office buildings. (He uses the bacon metric for context: Each Dane consumes only half as much bacon, a little more than six and a half pounds, although bacon itself is very hyggelig.) Where Americans see a fire hazard, the Danes see an antidepressant. The Danish word for spoilsport, Wiking notes, is lyseslukker, “which literally means, ‘one who puts out the candles.’”
How to get hygge? Go home and stay there, preferably in your hyggekrog — aka “cozy nook” — wrapped in a blanket, drinking a cup of coffee and watching a Danish police procedural about a serial killer with your friends.
The question posed by Johansen, the chef, in her book, How to Hygge, is largely answered not by furniture or clothes, but in recipes for glogg, muesli, fruit compote, salt cod fritters and roast lamb, her own versions of the highlights of the New Nordic Cuisine.
For her part, Brits, the author of The Book of Hygge, eschews recipes and goes in hard for a moody, meditative approach in which she extols the virtues of wooden bowls, cuddling, brushing your teeth while your partner brushes his or her teeth and stands next to you, being naked, vintage textiles, pendant lights, circular tables, burned spatulas, old shoes, honking geese and line-dried laundry, among many other wholesome items and behaviours.
Why hygge, why now? Lucie Greene, the resident futurist at J Walter Thompson, said she thought it was a reaction to “the well-being movement,” noting the elitism of a lifestyle predicated on $100 Lululemon leggings and $10 bottles of cold pressed juices.
“Hygge is an easier trend to adopt because it’s so personal and so accessible,” Ms Greene said. “You’re not just indulging for the sake of it. You’re supposed to savour it. It’s no surprise it came from a nation seeking comfort from the dark winters. It lends itself quite naturally to these uncertain times.” As for how it might play out on a retail level, she said she imagined “a massive emphasis on textiles and home wares, from affordable cashmere to candles, kind of like the cocooning thing in the ‘90s.”